Ministry Is More Than A Job, It's A Calling

The Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines authenticity as “true to one’s own personality, spirit or character; is sincere and authentic with no pretensions.” Our interpretation of this is that you are the real you all the time. You are the same here as you are at home as you are at the grocery store. The same you in every walk of life. Consider this, true authenticity only works in the correct order.

• 1st with Jesus – Vertical Authenticity
• 2nd with yourself – Internal Authenticity
• 3rd with others – Horizontal Authenticity

We believe that if you’re getting it right, you’re being honest and transparent with Jesus, honest and transparent with yourself and with others. “There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.” – Steve Maraboli

To be gospel centered is to be surrendered to the saving grace of Jesus and to have a clear understanding of His imputed righteousness given to you freely as He paid the price you could not pay through His death, burial, and resurrection. It’s this understanding that compels us in ministry and clarifies our roles in His church body. We do ministry through two guiding principles which allows us the flexibility to innovate, but also the guardrails of accountability to help us stay unified in our mission.

• We value the mission over the model – this means we encourage creativity and innovation and choose to stay flexible on our methods and programs.
• Kingdom-minded activity fuels our ministry philosophy allowing us to partner with other churches on the main issues.

You don’t always get to choose your family, but you do get to choose if you are active in your family or not. We hope you choose our staff family as a place to grow, be encouraged, and do life with, but the choice is really yours. This cannot be a rule, but a lifestyle choice. Here are three basic ideas that will help fuel this in you.

• We love your family because they are our family too.
• How you are doing is more important than what you are doing.
• Rhythm’s rule: Good families know how to work hard, play hard and rest well.

We take the posture that we have not arrived at a destination, but actually all of us are on a journey together. Each with different strengths and weaknesses. We believe in sharpening your strengths and staff or overcoming your weaknesses. So, with that said, here are some guiding principles to help you be a lifelong learner.

• We learn so that we can lead.
• We steward what we know to help others.
• We are students before critics, meaning we have critical minds not hearts.
• What are you learning? Who are you passing it along to?

Regarding ministry efforts, we want to be good stewards of the resources God has given us. This means that we want to maximize our ministry impact, but not minimize the experience. There is more art than science when dealing with creativity and experience. We believe in the balance of fueling creativity, but also being prudent with our resources. Below are some helpful principles to clarify this value.

• In everything we do ‘good enough’ is good enough when it doesn’t distract from the worship of God.
• Creativity more than budget fuels what we can do.
• The point is not the experience, the point is to experience Jesus.

Trust:

• When there is a gap between what I expect and what I experience, I will fill it with trust.
• When I observe someone filling the gap with suspicion, I will come to your defense.
• If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I will come directly to you about it.

Be Trustworthy:

• I commit to do what I say I will do and when I don’t, I’ll tell you.
• I commit to not over promise and under deliver. But, if it looks like that’s where things are headed, I’ll tell you.
• If you confront me about the gaps I have created, I’ll tell you the truth.

• In all circumstances we invite the Holy Spirit to guide our decision making.

• We strive to be a ‘one another’ church.

• God appoints top-down leadership to give and affirm vision.
• We unite under God-affirmed vision and practice mutual submission.
• Unity demands me to be the best at my role and flexible enough to adjust to support others when needed.

• We live in the balance of being amazed that God would use us and knowing that God has created us to do good works.
• Collaboration is the marriage of humility to ask and confidence to contribute amongst the team.