MISSION:  To train ourselves and others to love like Jesus Christ

 

TRAINING REGIMEN

1.         Worship:  To love like Jesus, we need to develop a lifestyle of expressing to the Father our love for Him and our dependence upon Him.

2.         Fellowship:  To love like Jesus, we need to engage other followers of Christ in mutually beneficial exchanges of grace and power

3.         Discipleship:  To love like Jesus, we need to grow in grace by diligently practicing the spiritual disciplines

4.         Ministry:  To love like Jesus, we need to serve others sacrificially

5.         Evangelism:  To love like Jesus, we must embody, demonstrate, and announce the kingdom of heaven locally and globally

 

VISION:  To connect disconnected individuals from the various cultures in Lavaca and Dewitt counties to a group of people and a process that enables them to experience and express the love of God in Jesus Christ

 

MAJOR ADJUSTMENT:  To move from an "institutional" mindset to a "mission team" mindset

 

MISSION ASSUMPTIONS:

I.                   People fall into two major categories:

A.   Disconnected

1.      Clueless

2.      Seeking

B.    Connected

1.       Learning

2.       Learning and Ministering

3.       Learning, Ministering, and On Mission

II.                Our training regimen is targeted at these two categories as follows:

A.   Disconnected

1.      Evangelism — Proclamation of God’s love

 

"How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?  And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?"  Romans 10:14

 

2.      Ministry—Demonstration of God’s love

 

"For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many?"  Mark 10:45

 

B.    Connected

1.       Worship—Celebration of God’s love

 

"Sing to the LORD a new song, and His praise in the assembly of the saints.  Let Israel rejoice in their Maker: Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King."  Psalm 149:1-2

 

2.       Discipleship—Integration with God’s love

 

"…Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," 2 Corinthians 10:5b

 

3.       Fellowship—Dissemination of God’s love

a.        Spiritually

 

"Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love."  Ephesians 4:16

 

b.       Physically

 

"Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common." Acts 4:32

 

III.             Our process of training to love like Jesus Christ has three key elements:

A.   Content

1.       The Glory of the Father

a.        As His greatest value

b.       As our greatest benefit

2.       The Ministry of the Son

a.        To us

b.       Through us

3.       The Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit

a.        Intimacy

b.       Supernatural activity

4.       The Authority of the Bible

a.        As an accurate story of God’s restoration

b.       As a reliable standard for determining what is true

c.        As a supernatural dynamic producing faith in the life of a follower of Jesus Christ

5.       The Mandate of the Mission

a.        As the primary reason God sent His Son into this world

b.       As the primary reason God leaves His children in this world

6.       The Reality of Divine Community

a.        As the eternal essence of the Godhead

b.       As the present dynamic of the Church

7.       The Necessity of New Covenant Provisions for Spiritual Formation

a.        A new purity

b.       A new identity

c.        A new disposition

d.       A new empowerment

8.       The Ministry and Giftedness of Every Follower of Jesus Christ

9.       The Privilege of Sacrifice and Suffering for the Sake of Christ

10.   The Blessed Hope of the Glorious Return of Our Lord Jesus Christ

B.    Character

1.       Internalize: Only what is real in us will be reproduced in others

2.       Model:  What others see in us will have a greater effect than what they hear from us

C.   Culture

1.     Definition: a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, which acts rather like a template (ie. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation.

2.     Two imperatives:

a.        Examine our own values and behaviors to distinguish those which we have learned from our society (negotiables) from those which we have learned from Divine revelation (non-negotiables)

b.       Study the ever-changing cultures around us to discern opportunities for and obstacles to communicating and reproducing the unchanging truth and values of the Kingdom of God

 

LEADERSHIP PARADIGMS