Values

When we try to find lasting satisfaction and personal wholeness in anything other than our relationship with the God who made us, the result is pain. At the most fundamental level, we participate in the kingdom of God through the restoration of our relationship with him. The result is intimacy, lasting satisfaction and lasting wholeness, and it affects every area of our lives.

From the very beginning, God wanted our relationships with each other to be characterized by vulnerability, trust and intimacy—but we chose shame, fear and isolation. God wants to restore our relationships. We participate in a community that is characterized by genuine care for one another, honesty, accountability to spiritual growth and the desire to seek God’s kingdom. Together.

In heaven, Christians of every tribe, tongue and nation will worship together. Jesus lived out a radical willingness to step across cultural boundaries to embrace anyone—especially those with unconventional backgrounds. To live the way of Jesus is to welcome and accept people from every background as they continue in their journey toward Him.

Jesus said that how we treat the overlooked—the poor, single parents and their children, orphans, the elderly, or those with special needs—is how we treat Him. A person who comes to understand the depths of his or her own brokenness and the extent of God’s mercy becomes the kind of person whose heart breaks for those who are hurting. We extend God’s kingdom when we offer mercy to the forgotten. It can only come from a heart transformed by God’s own mercy.

Jesus described Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life, and those who have truly experienced the goodness of His Way want to invite others into it. The kingdom of God expands by combining words of truth with deeds of love and servanthood. Rather than asking people to come to Him, Jesus met people where they were—so we do the same.