1. Jesus is the key.
..not just to Heaven, but to life right now. We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real and lasting hope for the world (John 14:6), and since we love the world (and yes, ourselves!), we want to lean our lives into Him and model our lives to please Him. For this reason, we don't apologize for the radical claims of the gospel, or for putting our relationship with Him first in our lives (Romans 1:16). We strive to respond faithfully to the call of Jesus to follow Him above all else in a world which so often competes for our time, energy, and attention (Luke 14:15-24).
2. People far from God matter deeply to Him, and they matter to us, too.
Jesus was sent to reconcile our lost world to God, its loving creator (Luke 15:1-32), and He calls us to do the same. We rejoice in what Jesus has done in our lives, and we long to help our unchurched or numb-churched neighbors find their way back to God. For this reason we seek to reach out to the neighborhood, region, and world around us with the everlasting love of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19-20, John 20:21, 1 Corinthians 9:19-27).
3. We worship God, not tradition. But tradition deserves our attention, too.
Where tradition helps to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and further the mission of our church, we embrace it. Where tradition becomes a wall between God and His people, we do an end-run around it (John 2:13-22, Matthew 23:13-36, John 9:1-41). But in all cases, we admit that we post-modern believers aren't the first ones to finally understand God's will--and in fact, we might be less able to grasp it than many of our tradition-bound ancestors, given our cultural distrust of authority and our idolatry of individuality.
While the gospel message of Jesus Christ remains unchanged (Hebrew 13:8), the manner in which it is proclaimed must change for it to be communicated effectively in a changing world (Mark 2:21-22). In our worship and in our ministry, we intentionally create experiences that are part-ancient and part-contemporary, to help us experience the age-old love of God in a fresh, relevant way.
4. Following Jesus is on-the-job training.
We can't outgrow Christian faith. As modern day disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to move from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity (Phillipians 3:13-14, Ephesians 4:12-14). For this reason we strive to bring people into an ever-growing relationship with Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19). This growth happens relationally in small groups (Acts 2:42-47), and educationally in Bible classes and personal study. As we grow in faith, we turn our hearts to God, giving of our selves and our resources -- freely and cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7).
5. Christians are a diverse group, but we're all one body.
We are a church of individuals, different in many ways, yet called together by God to be one in ministry and mission. As members of the same body, we become more effective when we work in harmony as a unified whole (John 17:20-23). Among us, love for one another is the norm (John 13:34, Romans 13:8), conflicts are resolved according to the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 18:15-17), and we seek to build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). We rejoice together, we suffer together (1 Corinthians 12:25-27), and we care for one another through the small groups with whom we do life together.
6. The Bible is God’s written Word-- pointing clearly to His Living Word, Jesus.
It’s like His heavenly library, and He gave all of us a library card. We believe the Bible was inspired by God, written by the authors His Spirit inspired, and protected by the Spirit through all its editions to show us the truth of God’s will for our lives and our world— and to invite us into relationship with Him through Jesus.
God is saddened when Christians neglect His Word; He poured His heart into it, so that we’d have an intimate and encouraging relationship with Him our whole life long. As Jesus showed by His frustration with the religious conservatives of His day, God gets angry when His Word is pridefully used as a weapon to wound or one-up each other, instead of to lovingly teach, re-direct, and inspire. But He’s equally really bummed when we spend too much time liberally critiquing His Word, and not enough time letting His Word liberally critique us.