It is our first priority as a church to glorify God. God is our agenda; He is everything to us; and we are seeking to spread the knowledge of His greatness to the entire world. We believe God has given us four avenues through which we accomplish this God-exalting act:

We gather to worship God. Throughout the week we are left to worship on our own. That is good and necessary, but Sunday morning is where it all comes together. The early church consistently gathered together to honor God as a larger group. It was an expression of their oneness through Christ and their common goal of glorifying God in everything.

We grow in Christ-likeness through doing life together. All things happen in our lives so that we will become shaped into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:28-29). Our Sunday school groups meet for the purpose of teaching God’s Word, prayer, true fellowship (sharing our lives), seeking God’s will, and showing up for one another. We do life together because God never meant for us to do it alone.

We give of everything for the advancement of God’s kingdom. Everything we have and are belongs to God, we are just called to be faithful managers. We don’t see this stewardship as a duty, we see it as a delight of our lives. God created us to be givers, not takers.

We go to make disciples. In Matthew 28:19-20 we have the Great Commission and we need to reaffirm our commitment to this. Jesus is saying that as we are going about our daily lives we ought to be making disciples. In other words, we live intentionally where God has sovereignly placed us to make the greatest impact with the gospel. We don’t change anybody effectively; the gospel has the power to change people eternally. We do have influence, but our influence only goes so far and so deep. But armed with the life-rescuing story of the gospel, God can now use our influence to radically rescue lost sinners and send their lives in a new direction.

This is who we are. Our methods and programs will change and evolve over the years, but the bedrock of these principles will never change. To remove one of them would be to destroy our identity and hamper our vision of magnifying the Lord together.

Grace & Peace,