Our Mission

To glorify God by
developing a passionate worshipping community of
mature empowered disciples of Jesus that
transforms the world with the powerful love of God
one person at a time

A. All for the glory of God

  1. Our individual lives and our corporate life have as their ultimate goal the glory (honor) of God so that His name (fame) may increase in the world (1 Corinthians 10:31).

B. We exist to develop

  1. To develop means to change, or cause to change, and become larger, stronger, or more impressive, successful, or advanced.
  2. Paul explained to the church in Philippi that he had not “arrived to perfection,” that is, he understood that the Christian life is never complete, that we are constantly “in process” of development toward becoming like Christ (3:12-14). Furthermore, Paul describes the church as the body of Christ, that is, a living organism that naturally develops when it is healthy (1 Cor. 12). So, it’s clear that healthy churches are living organisms that develop, change, and grow.
  3. The practical result of this truth is that we are never satisfied with the status quo in our personal faith or the position of the church. While holding closely to unchanging truths found in Scripture, we are regularly asking the question, “How does God want us to change, to become stronger, or more advanced."

C. We want to be a passionate worshiping community

  1. We are a Worshiping Community

    a. A community is a group of people connected by a common purpose. As God’s church, then, we are bound to one another by our commitment to God and the mission of this church.

    b. Throughout the Bible, we see that God is creating a “people” (not “persons") to glorify Himself (Gen. 12:1-3). That is, He is building a community (not individuals) that will serve as His light in the world (Matt 5:14-15). Therefore, the Christian life is a life lived in meaningful relationship with the family of God. In other words, there is no such thing as a “Lone Ranger” Christian.

    c. Furthermore, this community is to be marked primarily by the worship of God. When God freed the Israelites from Egypt, He did this so that they could worship Him in freedom (Ex. 9:13). Therefore, we are a community that is brought into existence to worship God, that is, to give Him His due praise and honor through song, word, and action.

  2. We want to be Passionate in all that we do

    a. To be passionate means to have a keen enthusiasm, intense desire, and strong feelings for something

    b. We desire to be a community that is characterized by keen enthusiasm, intense desire and strong feelings for God and all people as expressed through our unique personalities.

D. We want to develop Mature Empowered Disciples

  1. Jesus’ final instructions to his followers were to go into all the world and make disciples of all kinds of people (Matt. 28:18-20).
  2. A disciple is a person who in the context of the church is passionately committed to a lifelong process of worshiping Jesus’ person, obeying Jesus’ words, doing Jesus’ deeds, and imitating Jesus’ life.

    a. In other words, an empowered disciple is someone who is with Jesus learning to be like Jesus in order to do the ministry of Jesus.

  3. Discipleship doesn’t happen without passionate and intentional commitment.

    a. You don’t drift into discipleship or absorb life and formation without choosing, without goals, without a clear plan to follow Jesus. Our intention to follow involves our whole heart and soul and mind and strength. It’s not a lukewarm or bloodless sterile commitment. Effort must be consistently exerted. Discipleship involves total devotion, extreme fervor, and passionate zeal. When someone is passionate, they are internally motivated. They give, share their faith, enter fellowship, worship, pray, study, not because they are forced to, or are manipulated, but because they love Jesus and want to serve him.

  4. We want to develop mature disciples.

    a. A mature disciple is a person whose conduct is like Christ (1 John 2:6), whose love for God and for others has been “perfected” (1 John 2:5), whose life is built on God’s ways (Matt. 7:24-25) as found in Scripture.

    b. A mature disciple is a balanced disciple who naturally lives a balanced lifestyle by exalting God in worship, engaging in meaningful community, expressing his/her faith through personal ministry, and expanding God’s kingdom in the world through personal missions.

E. We desire to transform the world with the powerful love of God

  1. We desire to be an “outward focused” church that actually sees the creation around us changed by the love of God working in and through us. By the end of our time, the people and places of Knox County and the world will be changed for the better.
  2. We believe that one of the best ways to transform the world is by church planting. So, we will actively participate with God as He continues to populate the planet with communities of light.
  3. We believe that the world — people and places — can actually be noticeably transformed by God’s love because it has the power to make significant change. Therefore we will purposefully seek practical ways to express His love in Knox County and around the world with special emphasis on ministering to the poor.
  4. Our motivation for transforming the people and places around us should be God’s abundant love showered on us (1 John 4:9-11). He first loved us, so we can (and ought to) love His creation. We do not want to work for change out of a sense of duty or obligation, but out of a sense of gratitude for the love God has shown us.

F. One person at a time

  1. God is interested in individual people, and so are we.

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