Vision

Everything we do is because we seek to be a gospel-centered, missional family.

Gospel

We are all about the gospel. That's the good news of Jesus' life,death, and resurrection for His people. Nothing is good news if Jesus has not taken our rebellion on Himself and given us His perfect record of obedience. Click for more info on our Beliefs.

Family

We gather around this gospel as individuals, but we also do it together, as a family. God has given Christians the church to be a family that will be a great help in our enjoyment in God and help us be more fruitful. We don't know if there is a formula for meltdowns, but at least one component of it is almost always isolation, and we want to see people in Christ's church using their gifts to help each other to be transformed by the gospel. The Bible is filled with descriptions of the church in family terms, and we want to live that out with each other.  

Here are our Family Traits:

1. Honesty. We commit to be honest with each other (and God) about how things are going. To rip off another church's statement, "This is an okay place to not be okay." The more honest we can be about ourselves and each other, the better chance we have of being a transformed community and working through conflicts with each other. Many of us have had serious questions and doubts in our Christian journey and, in many ways, continue to have them. Honest questions are encouraged here.

2. Family Worship. You might have noticed that we are short on traditional children's programming that you see at most churches. There are many good programs, but we are going to put more resources towards equipping families to worship and be on mission together.

Parents are commissioned by God to care for their children and work towards their children's spiritual, emotional, and physical growth (much like the Redeemer groups). Also, they do ministry together and try to be missional with people that God has put in their lives at work, in sports leagues, or in their neighborhood. We see our entire ministry to children as an extension of what is happening in the home.

3. Simple/Cheap. God has given every person here "stuff." We want to model on a corporate level what we want to see happen on individual and family levels throughout our church.

Simple. We don't over-program. That means our church life is simple and you don't have to be at meetings 3 or 4 times a week. That also means we spend less money because we don't have to staff and fund programs we don't have. One of the real bonuses is that this equals a simpler life and more time for you to spend as a family (immediate family and Redeemer family) and to be missional. We hope that you will follow our lead and simplify your life as much as possible as well.

Cheap. The fewer financial obligations we have as a church and as individuals, the more freedom for meaningful ministry we have. Again we are modeling something that we want all of our people to do: stay out of consumer debt, spend within a budget, and think kingdom first.

4. Cross-Cultural Ministry/Social Justice.  The gospel is not an abstract reality!  It calls us to reflect the diversity of the kingdom of Jesus and to bring healing and restoration.  This is best done in word and deed.

Cross-Cultural. This has several layers to it. This starts in Lubbock. We want to serve people from different socio-economic backgrounds and enjoy as much diversity in our family as possible. We know there are limits to this and that Lubbock has very few models of diversity, but we value it and want to do everything we can to get there. That's the primary reason we are non-negotiable on locating inside the loop. This passion extends out beyond Lubbock and is one of the driving forces behind our missions mobilization emphasis. We believe the big story of the Bible is God restoring all ethnic groups to Himself, and we want in on that.

Social Justice. We want to use our financial and human resources to do something about racial and social inequities wherever we can starting in Lubbock and extending internationally.

Missional

But the goal isn't to be a family and stop there. This is a family of people who are constantly including people in it. In other words, this family seeks to be missionaries in every context it can. This starts with people like us in Lubbock, but extends to people in this city who are different than ourselves and to pockets of people on the other side of the world with little or no access to the good news (gospel) of Jesus. You put it all together and you get a gospel-centered missional family.  We want to bring this good news of Jesus to Lubbock and then to the nations. What do we want to see happen?

20/20 Vision

We are praying for the following to happen by the year 2020 for Jesus' glory:

1. A Gospel-centered ministry helping connect people in Lubbock to the grace of Jesus and submit to the Lordship of Jesus.  

2. Twenty church plants in the United States. We will work alongside of the Acts 29 network to not only plant churches, but a part of a church planting movement in our nation. The churches we seek to plant will immediately look to reproduce themselves.

3. Twenty teams internationally. Using the International Mission Board and privately funded missionaries, we are praying for twenty teams primarily in the10/40 window (the most unreached part of the world). These teams will do many things including health and educational programs, but will be connected with planting indigenous churches in their city/region.