Our church’s priorities
Reverent & Liturgical Corporate Worship
As a church we want to approach the gathering of corporate worship with a proper balance of reverence and rejoicing. We don’t want to treat worship as a casual affair designed for entertainment. Instead, we want the Bible’s priorities and patterns to structure and shape not only who we worship but how we worship. So our worship service follows the rhythms of adoration, confession, assurance, preaching, communion, and the closing benediction.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church:
A Central Focus on the Gospel
Only one thing in the Scripture is given the label, “of first importance,” and that’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a church we want the person and work of Christ to be the sun at the center of our church’s solar system that holds everything else in its proper gravitational orbit. We want to exalt Christ in such a way that He permeates and motivates everything we do.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church:
Faithfulness to the Great Commission
As a church we want Jesus’s last command that He gave on earth to be our first priority: “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). As a church body, we want to partake in that commission to see disciples made ‘of all nations’. We seek to do this by partnering with frontier missionaries who are bringing the Gospel to unreached peoples, by partnering with local ministries that are spreading the Gospel outside the church walls, and by seeking to be faithful witnesses in all the various relational spheres that God has placed us.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church:
Intentional & Hospitable Community
As a church we want to reflect the reality that in Christ we are part of God’s forever family. It is our conviction that the health and growth of a church family is best cultivated through organic relationships rather than overly structured programming. And one of the best ways to develop relationships is by emphasizing and practicing hospitality and life-on-life interpersonal discipleship.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church:
Families & Generations Growing Together
We want our church to be a place where there is not just peer to peer relationships but an intergenerational mingling. The body of Christ should be a place where the young are encouraged by the wisdom and experience of the elderly, and the elderly are encouraged by the liveliness and enthusiasm of the young. Also, we want the worship of the church to look like the family dinner table where every member of the family is seated together and feasting on the same meal.
Doctrinal & Doxological Preaching & Teaching
Amidst all the shallowness, confusion, and distortion that we find in the world, we want our church to be a place where the truth of God’s Word is taught with clarity and depth, where we can ask and wrestle with difficult question, and where we can be equipped from all the Bible for all of life. As we are clear and uncompromising about the truth, we don’t want to be cold and lifeless in response to the truth. Instead, we want to proclaim the truth in such a way that it not only renews our minds but also ignites our affections and stirs our hearts in awe and wonder.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church:
A Plurality of Leaders Who Shepherd and Serve
We believe that Christ, in His wisdom, has structured the oversight and governance of His church in such a way that there is to be a shared leadership of authority and responsibility among a group of qualified elders and deacons. This plurality principle is meant to protect the church from being built on a personality cult or ruled by a dictatorship. The office of elder is called to spiritual shepherd the church and the office of deacon is called to practically serve the church.
Check out this sermon to hear a fuller explanation of this priority of our church: