Purpose & Philosophy Part 2: High on Culture & High in Biblical Content

We hold to missional practice for cultural relevancy. We, as a church seek to be the church that is extremely relevant to our culture, so that the lost may find salvation. In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul engages a pagan people at Mars Hill. Paul took the task of making the timeless truths of the gospel message relevant for his hearers. This is called “contextualization.”

The Apostle Paul serves as our example. He made the gospel culturally relevant for the people of Athens. He understood their position on reality, the spiritual interests,he looked for common ground in their worldview, and challenged them to understand Christ!

The goal than is to make the gospel as relevant as possible while at the same time keeping high biblical content as as the source of truth. Note the Hughes Scale above, one would want to be in Quad B, if they are committed to being a church that is strongly committed to missional practices, high on culture and high on biblical content.

Practically this means
- We preach through books of the Bible as well as topics that relate to culture
- We dig theology and believe theological education should be taught more in the churches
- The people in our church look like and dress like everyday people, church will not be place where we polish up and come in our Sunday Best, we come to worship as sinful people in need of worship.
- We value culture, arts, music, business, economics, etc.
- We don't look at culture as the enemy rather the context in which we declare and demonstrate the gospel.

Our Missional Approach

Side Door Assimilation
If we as a church will own our vision statement: Love One. Love All. We won’t try to open the door of the church wider; rather we will open more doors in various communities around the city.

reaching a diverse people of various culture and various needs. This approach fosters flexibility, creativity and contextualization of the gospel, making the message more relevant within each cultural community. This idea is not new rather it is ancient. It is a basic missionary principle that our church holds to at the core of its philosophy. We believe that more and more people today want to experience or witness Christian community without having to join the public worship celebration first.

In light of our cultural experience, and a biblical mandate to make disciples, we as a people of God see value in extending the gospel in multiple avenues, empowering Christians to extend gospel within both small and medium sized communities throughout our city. We recognize that the traditional worship celebration may as well be the first step for the unchurched; therefore we will in time establish a weekly worship service on Sunday mornings for the purpose of Exaltation of Christ, through the preaching of his word, communion for believers, worship and baptism.

This organic approach allows our church body to engage their neighbors, at multiple levels. This model pushes our church leadership to focus on Leadership Development, Equipping Christians to Establish Communities.

This model is a missional model for churches. It’s not the model but a model. There are many other forms but we are choosing this way to keep or structures a little more decentralized than your typical church and more flexible to increase our member participation and upping the Ante on how to do church. We are empowering ordinary people to be pastors to their neighborhoods and spheres of influence. We are talking the church to our culture.

The advantages are many. To name one, this model increases access and opportunity for un-churched/un-believers to see and experience the gospel in the context of community. The un-churched are able to more quickly and organically assimilate into a community of believers, which in reality increases their likelihood of sticking around and growing in their faith.