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            Before I came to Shady Oaks the mission statement was “Growing God’s family by building Christ-centered homes.” I do not disagree with any portion of that statement, but I do believe that every church is called to fulfill the Great Commission and the church’s mission statement should reflect how our church is going to accomplish that. With that in mind, we discussed this several months ago and I have been working on a new mission statement that hopefully helps us focus in on becoming disciples who make disciples. The new mission statement is:

We exist to make disciples by gathering people to worship God, connecting people to a Christ-centered community, growing people to reach their world in the power of the Holy Spirit, and multiplying disciples to expand God’s Kingdom.

This mission statement zeroes in on the disciple-making map and hopefully will help guide us to see our mission in gathering, connecting, growing, and multiplying. This statement is just something else, unless we give life and action to it by how we pray, plan, and proceed. The process of rolling this out to the church will be done over the next several months but will be something we hope will become central to what we do and why we do it. Gathering, connecting, growing, and multiplying will become pillars that we build our ministry focuses with and they each have actions and goals for our church to pursue to become a multiplying church. Over this month, we will be exploring each of those value actions and goals to gain further insight to understanding the reason behind a change of mission statement.

          To whet our appetites with a reminder of what these pillars are focused on, here is a summary.

Gather – When Jesus moved to Capernaum after John the Baptist was arrested, He announced “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;] repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Shortly after this, some disciples of John went to find out who this Jesus was and if he was the one that John prepared the way for. Jesus told them to “come and see” who He was. We hope to be a church where people come to seek answers to their questions and find Christ and a church to belong to.

 

Connect  - Further in Jesus’s ministry, Jesus began to call His disciples where He said, “come and follow me.” This calling was to make a deeper connection to Jesus by living life together. We as a church can connect people to Christ, a community to belong to, and a ministry cause to give time and talents to.

 

Grow – After Jesus spent time with the disciples, He called them “to be with me.” This calling was to help the disciples see that their calling was to be the same as Jesus’ and that they too would do what Jesus did. As a church, we should want to train people to walk with God feeding themselves, reach the world around them, and invest in a few in disciple-making.

 

Multiply – Throughout Jesus’s ministry with the disciples, He challenged them to “go and bear fruit” of what they saw and experienced with Christ. He shared in John 15 that they were called to “bear fruit that abides.” Fruit that abides is fruit that is rooted in Christ and multiplies itself in other vines. We are called to multiply leaders in our church. Multiply disciples who make disciples, and Lord willing we can become a church that multiplies into other churches.

Lord willing, together we become a church that fulfills this mission and leaves a lasting Kingdom Legacy.