We don’t shy away from being different than other churches. We simply seek to follow God’s leading for our specific church, even if we are the only ones. We’re okay with that!
No frills, no faking, just Jesus!
All About Jesus
For Him
We are all about Jesus Christ. We want every word that we say, every song that we sing, every prayer that we pray, to point directly to Him. We want everyone to walk away, not talking about our church, but talking about Jesus. And we will do whatever it takes to make it all about Jesus!
There are no celebrities in our church; the only one we want to be famous is Jesus! People may serve in different roles and capacities, but that doesn't make any one part of the body any more important than another (1 Corinthians 12:21–25). While our pastor serves in this role as a pastor, there is also no need to address him as "Pastor Chris", you may simply call him "Chris" (Matthew 23:8-12).
No Celebrities
Community
The first Sunday night of every month, we gather at one person's home to share a meal together. The book of Acts shows us that the first disciples gathered in the corporate worship setting, as well as from "breaking bread from house to house", where they shared a meal with one another regularly (Acts 2:46). We value our time spent together, with no agenda, but to simply eat and share our lives with one another. Everyone is invited!
Family Meals
Prayer
Prayer truly is the foundation of our church. Everything that we do starts with prayer, because this is our relationship with Jesus. Every Thursday night, for about an hour and a half, we gather together to sing to and talk with Jesus. This is a free-flowing, unscripted night, where we not only get to commune with God, but it's also a great opportunity for those who feel like they don't know how to pray. Everyone is invited!
Prayer Nights
Worship
Declaring that you are Spirit-led means many different things to different people, especially if you grew up in more charismatic backgrounds. What we mean by Spirit-led is that we will prepare like the Holy Spirit is in the preparation AND, we will lead like the Holy Spirit is in the leading. This means that we spend time preparing and doing things to the best of our abilities. But, if the Holy Spirit wants to change those plans, even in the midst of a service, we submit ourselves to His leadership. We will follow!
Spirit-Led
Jesus will be the focus of our worship. We tend to stay away from songs that are more "me" focused. There is nothing wrong with these types of songs; they have encouraged and built up the body of Christ in many ways. But for our gatherings, our goal is to worship Jesus; to take the focus off of ourselves and place it on Him!
Jesus-Centered
The posture that we always want to have during worship is towards God. We never want any focus to be on anything other than Him. We are very intentional about how we set up the room and the placement of worship leaders, so that they are not the focus. We don't use stages to elevated anyone, because the only one we want elevated is Jesus!
Postured Toward God
Distraction-Free
In order for our focus to be fully on Jesus, we try to make our service as distraction-free as possible. For us that means that we use simple lyrics on black backgrounds, so as not to distract anyone with backgrounds that can take our focus off Jesus. We also don't use flashing lights that overproduce our time in worship. Sometimes looking cool actually distracts us from the real presence of Jesus. We keep lights on, both during worship and message portions of our service. We don't need to worship the light of the world, while sitting in darkness (John 1:4-5).
The Word of God
We love the Word of God (the Bible)! It gives us life and leads us closer to Jesus. Every Sunday, every message is birthed directly from the Word of God. Without the Word of God, our messages are just words. So, we stick to the Word and what it says. We tend to follow an expository preaching style, within a sermon series structure. During these, we will follow a book, passage, or section of the Bible, reading verse by verse and breaking down the Scriptures read.
There are times when we have sermon series that are more "topical" (meaning that we choose a topic, like "forgiveness", and bring in various places from the Bible that talk about this subject). Even then, we are very careful to not read verses out of context, or read something into the Bible that is not there.