OUR CORE VALUES:

In our effort to live sent daily, to cultivate the Gospel into the lives of every person we encounter, and to speak the message that God came near, we emphasize these six core values: praying ceaselessly, resourcing together, developing leaders, shaping future, contextualizing relationship, and living sent.

1. praying ceaselessly

We are ever in prayer, communicating with God, making our requests to Him, always listening for His response, and responding accordingly (1st Thess 5:17). We are asking God for direction and wisdom on how to best be the church to the people along the I-4 corridor of Central Florida and beyond (James 1:5). We are seeking God for His provision of the leaders necessary to lead the decentralization of the Gospel to the people along the I-4 corridor and beyond (Mt 9:36-38). We respond to God and can change our plans at any time if we feel led by the Holy Spirit to make such changes (Acts 16:1-9).

2. resourcing together

We see each local church as a part of “the church” – the movement of people that Jesus unleashed nearly 2000 years ago to simply eat together, pray together, believe in the potential of people, and draw it out as we draw closer to Christ and to one another (Matthew 16:18 and Acts 2:42). We care more about connecting people with Christ and a local body of Christ-followers than we do about just connecting them with our church. That’s because we have a heart for a region and a heart to partner together with any church that wants to make disciples. We see each new church as a means to Kingdom focus rather than an end in and of itself (Acts 9:31). We know that Jesus values His church existing on mission for the world to restore humanity rather than preserving herself (Genesis 3:15). We will stay external in our focus and simple in our pragmatism so that the local expression of the church is easily reproducible and so that the possibilities remain endless for every man, woman, and child to hear the message that God came near (Acts 1:8). We will share everything – people, money, creativity, resources, and life together (Acts 2:44).

3. developing leaders

We trust that Jesus will always answer our prayer for leaders by sending leaders for His harvest (Matthew 9:36-38). We are trusting Him for the future leaders to come from those who will one day trust Him (1st Timothy 1:15-16). We believe that a true leader exists for the success of others rather than the promotion of self (1st Thessalonians 2:8). Leaders are interchangeable, mobile, and “position-less” and will be shared among the network for the greater benefit of the Kingdom (Matthew 20:25-28). Leaders will be developed within the context of relationships through the process of mentoring and internship, challenged in their very construct of church as a “who” and in practical methods of execution, and then unleashed to live to the fullest of how they are wired and gifted in their specific context (Mark 1:17 and Acts 19:10).

4. shaping future

We believe that Jesus wants us to be “salt and light,” influencing leaders and culture and community by living sent among them, creating the collision of their circumstance with the reality of God, bring out the “God-flavor” God intended to be in and through them, and drawing them closer to the God who made them (Matthew 5:13-16). We want to be a sentence in the grander story of restoring the “who” of church and renewing the heart and expression of the church for the next generation (Titus 2).

5. contextualizing relationship

We believe that we serve the Master of contextualization, who put on human skin in order to connect the message that God came near with all those He related with (John 1:14). We believe God is calling us to do the same – to value what He values about church and translate our personal relationship with Christ into the relationships we develop in a specific context (Romans 12:1-2). We aspire to be highly relational as Jesus was with His followers (John 10:11-14). As a coral reef is composed of connecting tissues and its strength and size increases as it expands, we believe that our churches should have interdependent relationships with one another, thus increasing our strength and impact for the Kingdom (Hebrews 10:19-25 and Ephesians 4:1-16). It is our desire to always place relationships over policies and organizational structures, and organize everything to best inspire and unleash people to live sent within our contexts and through their relationships (Galatians 5:13-15).

6. living sent

Each of us (whether a “pastor” or not) as Christ-followers are letters from God, declaring the message that He has come near and living near enough to our culture for them to read it (John 20:21 and 2nd Cor 3:1-6). We will live to love God, love people, and make disciples as we live in the daily among our family, alongside our neighbors, in the marketplace, around the world, and on the web (Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 12:30-31). There is no division of “laity” and “clergy.” We are all able to live the message of Christ, and we are all needed and valuable and necessary in order to be the church the way Jesus intended. This is the basis for a church planting movement on a micro and macro level (1st Corinthians 12:12-31). Everyone is expected to be sent from their local body on some level, whether in living sent in their spheres of influence in the daily or to be the church in a new expression elsewhere (Acts 1:8 and Matthew 28:18-20).