Our Vision: the City Rejoices

Our Mission: We exist so that normal people become missional followers of Jesus.

Missional is a term used to describe the holistic nature of a church or a follower of Jesus.
A missional church raises its head and surveys its city, and then it, as Tim Keller writes, “adapts and reformulates” all of its activities toward the single end of pursuing its mission in that city. It does not have some mission-based activities. It is a mission through and through. Any activities that do not serve the mission are jettisoned as just so much excess weight. The upshot is that the missional church tends to be a very streamlined church in which its mission is the filter for what it chooses to do and, equally important, what it chooses not to do. Some of the adjectives that ring true for the missional church are: streamlined, focused, engaged, present. The following is a brief list of the core components of a missional church:

Engage the Culture with the Gospel.

The missional church does not see itself as separated from the culture around it, but fully engaged in the activities of the city, and sees itself as a force of influence in those activities. The missional church seeks to free its community to have the space in their lives to engage the city where their strengths and passions lie. Artists in the art world, teachers in the school system, athletes in the realm of sports, bankers in the financial sphere. It avoids the sacred/secular dichotomy and encourages its members to wade into the culture as followers of Jesus. Rather than seeking to set up a separate subculture, the missional church learns the vernacular and the culture of the city in which its mission lies, and seeks to speak that language and live in that culture.

Serve Our Neighbors and Our City.

One of the segmentations that has happened in the past century in American Church circles is a split between preaching the gospel and helping the poor. The missional church rejects this segmentation as artificial and inimicable to the life of the follower of Jesus. The missional church embraces the teachings of Jesus about the poor, hurting and marginalized, and sees itself as the hands and feet of Jesus in a needy world. We wish we did not have to be, but in the fallen world we live in, we seek to be the Good Samaritan, and we will not pass by the man bleeding on the road. We exist so that the city around us will rejoice because through us the love of Christ is manifest to them.

Pursue Normal People.

(people not yet followers of Jesus)
The mission of Jesus was one of pursuit. In his own words he came “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). This ethos drives the missional church. It defines itself as a community that exists so that others will come to know and follow Jesus.