The mission of Grace Community Church is short.
GCC exists to encourage growing followers of Jesus Christ.
We believe it’s easy to understand, but it’s obviously somewhat subjective. Our staff has been working over the last few months to add some clarity to what we mean by “growing followers of Jesus Christ”. In an all day staff retreat recently, we decided on ten attributes of a growing follower of Jesus.
We call them our core values and we will be sharing them with our church in the coming weeks. These will become principles to guide how we encourage discipleship at every level of ministry.
Our core values:
A growing follower of Jesus values…
GATHERING: consistently gathering with the Church to celebrate Jesus and encounter Biblical teaching. (Acts 2:42, Hebrews 10:25)
COMMUNITY: building authentic relationships of encouragement and accountability with other followers of Jesus. (Acts 2:44, 1 Corinthians 12:12)
SERVING: developing a servant’s heart that looks to always meet the needs of others. (Matthew 20:28, 1 Peter 4:10)
PRAYER: maintaining a continuous conversation with God. (1 Thessalonians 5:17, James 5:16)
GOD’S WORD: spending consistent time reading the Bible and applying its Truth. (Acts 2:42, 2 Timothy 3:16)
SHARING THEIR STORY: creating conversations about what God has done and is doing in his/her life. (Acts 1:8, 1 Peter 3:15)
WISDOM: seeking God’s will in all decisions. (Proverbs 8:11, James 1:5)
GENEROSITY: developing a growing generosity with resources and finances. (Proverbs 3:9, 2 Corinthians 9:7)
INTEGRITY: striving to develop a reputation that honors God. (Matthew 5:16, Ephesians 4:1-3)
INFLUENCE: maximizing influence to point others to Jesus. (Deuteronomy 4:9, 1 Peter 3:16)
Does your church have something such as this to help shape programs, ministry and teaching?
Not to start an argument on my blog but let me ask a question. We have the Bible to express all of God's Word also. So does your church only read it or is there a message which helps people understand how to apply it to their life?
While many of yours are on our list, we have FUN on there as well. We are in a "kid-saturated" area and FUN makes it easier to open their hearts to Christ.
I love the fun! We certainly have that…
You forgot a sense of humor. Christians often take themselves and the Gospel WAAAYYYYY too seriously. The Gospels are full of irony, satire and humor. I bet Jesus laughed frequently …
Thanks. We do laugh a lot at our church.