Behind many of the front doors of the nice homes in our community are broken, torn and hurting people.  Many of them are so busy pursuing the American Dream that they are too pre-occupied to notice that they are not in love with their spouses anymore and their children don’t know them.  They are medicating the emptiness with all sorts of strategies.  They need us to show them the way to restoration.  We are a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.

Restoring God’s world one heart at a time.

Why?  Because we have been uniquely equipped and called by God to do this.  We have the right experience as a congregation; we have the right passion as a people.  And we have shared values that we believe if all the people who live in our community would hold then restoration would begin.

Our Values…

Mending Brokenness

Bringing healing to the secret places of the soul where the facades of security, success, and significance we present to the world only succeed in imprisoning the person God intended us to be.

Deepening Faith

Presenting everyone mature in Christ, everybody complete, everybody whole, everybody just the way God designed them to be.   So that human lives can flourish as God intended them to flourish, so that the power of sin might lose its grip on humanity.

Strengthening Families

Preparing the next generation for the journey of life by understanding that life is not a series of random, arbitrary acts, but that we all are part of God’s epic story of conflict, victory, love, and restoration.

Pursuing Peace

Establishing (building, creating, developing, joining) God’s dream that all the people of the world are woven together into a beautiful, harmonious, interdependent, knitted and webbed relationship with each other and the physical world.

Going forward we will dig deep into these values.  We will protect these values.  We will filter everything we do in this church though those values.  If an activity does not move us closer to living out those values we will not do it.  We will live out those values as a church and as a individuals.

How Will We Know We Are Hitting the Mark?

We will know when Sunday after Sunday we will see…

Wounded Healers

Wounded healers leave here ready and willing to speak words of grace and truth into the hearts of fragmented lives. Sometimes just to listen, sometimes to just pray, but we will be agents of healing.

Mature Believers

We will see Christ followers falling deeper and deeper in love with Jesus and see their Biblical wisdom in a steady growth trajectory up and to the right.  They will want to learn more, give more, love more, serve more all bring glory to the God who has saved them.

Strong Families

We will see families building their foundations on the life of Jesus, his teachings, and his example; a legacy of faithful dependence on Jesus that will set them apart in this world.

Peace Makers

We will send out peace makers into the community that are committed to advancing the Kingdom God.  What upsets God will upset us.  What burdens the heart of God will burden our hearts.  We will leave every Sunday so affected by the love of Jesus and so filled by the presence of the Holy Spirit that we will infect our community with God’s Shalom.  It will be an Immaculate Infection.

What is Our Long-range Strategy for Restoration?

Our strategy won’t be easy, but it should be relatively simple. We will provide three safe environments.

Worship

Since worship is a human response to a divine revelation and every time we gather as a group in Jesus name we know God will say something, then we must respond.  God says something and we respond to it; God does something, and we respond to it.  Sometimes it means we laugh and shout to the Lord.  Sometimes it means we applaud.  Sometimes it means we weep for the joy of grace; sometimes we weep for the sorrow of sin.  Sometimes we are loud.  Sometimes we are quiet.  But worship always requires a response. And whenever we respond to God, we are changed.

Growth Groups

We will meet in one-on-one and in little groups in homes, coffee houses, and a various other venues for the purpose of encouraging each other to keep running the race, to learn more about who Jesus is, comfort each other when life kicks us in the teeth, and to hold each other accountable when we want to drift away from Him.

Serving Teams

We will serve each other, we will serve our community and we will serve the world.  There are countless little things that we can do that will teach us humility and bring civility to this hostile world.

There are people who need our hands and feet to do for them what they can’t do for themselves.

There are causes we will be involved in because there are voiceless people who need someone will lift them up and make things right.  We will bring the Kingdom of God to bear in this world.  There are water wells to be dug, vitamins to distribute, micro-financing to offer and human trafficking to end.

We will serve the city for the sake of the city. 

God will be pleased when we join Him in this restoration covenant that is as ancient as Noah and the Ark.  Nothing pleases the Father more than to see His children join Him in bringing ‘Up There Down Here.’  We will join with the Father to make His dream come alive on this earth.

There are hearts that need to be restored to right relationship with God through Jesus.  There are marriages that need to be restored through deep community with other brothers and sisters in Christ.  There are families that need to be restored through wise counsel and life-coaching centered in the Bible.  There are leaders that need to be called and equipped to pass on to the next generation this mission and these values. There are wrongs in this society that need to be righted, that can only be righted if we burn with a righteous anger and then get up and do something about those wrongs.

For if the Gospel is not good news for everybody it is not good news for anybody.

One day the leaders in our community will come to us and say, “It is better for us that you are here.”  They will be glad that there is a group of people so committed to personal and social restoration.

And the scripture will be true about us that says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices…”  Proverbs 11:10