WINTER STORM: SERVICE CANCELLED FOR JANUARY 14. MESSAGE WILL STREAM LIVE AT 10AM
Our Values
Four pillars guide our spiritual formation as disciples of Christ
God in our daily lives
Rather then sending me commands from a great distance, God is actually communicating with me in my daily life. All of the things we come across in our lives are created because of God's love. They are gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. The God who came down in Jesus is continually coming down into our days, journeying with us. We can become aware of his loving presence and his invitations to us - at work, even because of work, through grief and loss, in joyful gatherings and in the routine sacrifices of parenting. We encourage an awareness of God in the concrete particulars of our lives. We invite you to notice where God and his goodness shows up in your days and to have courage to notice his perceived absence. Even disordered desires, like a spark running along a fuse, can lead us into an awareness of our deeper desire for God.
Intentional Relationships
We invite and encourage an intentionality around who we spend time with and in what context. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are crucial in our development, but the people of God are the third leg of that stool. Who is encouraging you? Inspiring you? If that is missing, how will you seek it out? Discernment of small and big movements in your life are processed in community. There is a sense of accumulated wisdom and learning from the past that requires humility to find and listen to. The traditions of the church and the wisdom from of those who have gone before us (both living and deceased) is a gift to us. God offers them as a support system.
In addition, God has uniquely wired you to offer healing to the world. As you discover for what God has made you, we expect God's spirit and your community to affirm how you might use your life and gifts to love the world. So often this means intentionally reaching out to support others.
Rhythms & Practices
God generously and lovingly offers his whole self to us. Not only that, he gives us gifts that are unique to us and crafts personalities he takes joy in releasing to the world. However, our flesh, the world and the spiritual powers of darkness contrive together to cloud our awareness of his gifts and presence. So, like an athlete who hopes to maximize her athletic gifts, we train our souls toward an awareness of the loving presence of God.
This training takes time. It involves planning and experimentation. The fruit it bears can be slow to manifest. And it's best done in community. We embrace the spiritual practices that have brought life to Christians since the early church - not to become "good" at reading our Bibles or fasting or prayer - but to be free to love and be loved. You'll find us often encouraging one another in all sorts of spiritual practices with playfulness and patience. All if this is not only towards a hopeful future - we believe that part of our growing awareness of God is that he is at work now. He invites us to expect his Kingdom to manifest in miraculous ways we can tangibly experience. So we practice becoming aware of what it feels like to reach for and love others via the gifts God's spirit energizes in us.
We embrace broader rhythms, as well. Our worship attends to the yearly church seasons. Our teaching flows from the Sunday lectionary. We encourage attention to rhythms of work, rest, study, prayer and play. Our patterns of spending money, acquiring our food, engaging technology and pleasure - in all of it we ask, "What is healthful to our souls and what is harmful?"
Empowerment of Holy Spirit
In our mission to "remove barriers and build onramps into God's love" we are utterly dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit. Since the initial outpouring at Pentecost, God has been generously offering his Spirit to empower us humans to carry on his ministry. And like Jesus' followers in the upper room, we ask and wait for his continual filling. We build moments of waiting into our prayer practices and into our gathered worship. We recognize he may come with great power via healing or prophetic encouragement or with gentle affirmation. We believe Jesus when he said we would love the world way he did, with presence and prophecy, wisdom and miracles, friendship and humility. His spirit in us empowers this kind of love that seeks the healing of the nations.
We encourage a posture of expectant waiting in all things. When making decisions we wait for the Holy Spirit to reveal his will through his direct communication, scripture, circumstances and our processed interior movements. We believe God speaks to us directly - and we tune in to that - but also that he corroborates through his Word and community.
