About Grace Church
Mission and Vision
We describe it as Love, Live, Serve. Our hope is that all of us are becoming passionate followers of Christ.
Love
The start, the key component and the end goal of our personal lives and life as a church is love.
The greatest commandment received was to love God. The second was to love one another. Without constant energy and focus on understanding what this really means for us individually and collectively, any plans or effort are subject to failure. Loving God and loving one another is the heart of the church and the purest expression of the Holy Spirit in each of us. Our primary source for developing a greater understanding of that love is scripture. In scripture we see and understand the true nature of God himself and His love for us…we receive clearer pictures of the image we were created to model.
Live
Grace community groups are small spiritual communities that meet throughout the week, mostly in homes, for bible study, prayer, mutual support and making friends. Community groups are at the heart of Grace Church. These groups provide a place for us to develop close friendships, learn and grow together. They also serve as a place for those who have not accepted Christ to learn more about what it means to be a Christian and to experience the reality of what it means to be a passionate follower of Christ.
Serve
Our service to each other, to those who make up the communities we live in and all the others with whom we share this planet is the most visible expression of our love. Serving others is a vital part of a passionate follower’s life and a person’s passion and commitment should grow through their involvement with Grace. Part of our mandate as a church is to provide teaching, training and to help people succeed at their efforts to serve with love. This is not limited to serving each other and the needs within our fellowship, but, equally important, also involves supporting people in their callings outside of Grace Church.
What We Believe
Christ has primacy!
Everything starts and stops with Jesus. He is the image of the unseen God. All creation testifies to Him as author and creator. All of scripture and life is informed by Him and informs us about Him. When He became flesh and dwelt among us, died and was raised, He changed everything…forever!
Our whole aim is to know Him more and to be transformed by Him. The church belongs to Him. In everything we say, in how we organize, in what we do, we are attempting to be attentive to these simple but core realities.
Scripture Reveals
We desire to be a community of Christ followers grounded in Scripture believing it to be a collection of writings that reveal God, his plan for humankind, and a history of his dealings with His creation.
As James wrote, we can’t be satisfied to simply listen to the word; we have to do what it says. We must guard against becoming consumers of church, consumers of faith, or consumers of worship when we should be active producers (priesthood). Jesus is our mediator with God, rather than professional clergy or priests. The presence of his Holy Spirit in each of us gives us the opportunity to be a family that learns from, sharpens and shapes one another. We hope to be a group of people who don’t simply learn to parrot the words and teaching of another person; rather we want to be people eager to receive the message by daily examining the Scriptures to see how it lines up.
Our hope is that in becoming a passionate follower of Christ, you will have a growing passion for Scripture and a dedication to working out your beliefs in the context of a Christian family.
Nicene Creed
- I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
- And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
- He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father.
- And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.
- And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.
- And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life in the world to come.
Organization
As a result of much prayer and years of study and application, Grace Church has adopted an organizational model that can be described as Christ-led, elder-covered, and people-powered.
CHRIST-LED
The Church is a non-clerical community. Unlike Israel, which was divided into sacred priestly members and lay members, the first-century, Christian church was a people’s movement. The distinguishing mark of Christianity was not found in a clerical hierarchy but in the fact that God’s Spirit came to dwell within ordinary, common people and that through them the Spirit manifested Jesus’ life to the believing community and the world.
ELDER-COVERED
We would best describe ourselves as an elder-led church. Each elder is equal in position with different gifting. Serving as an elder is a task of servant leadership, not authoritatively lording over people.
PEOPLE-POWERED
We would also describe ourselves as a church where everyone helps with ministry.
We believe this model most accurately reflects the intent of the teaching of Jesus for us today. It is important to note that this structure, like any other, only functions as well as the people who are part of it.