There are many ways to arrive at a destination. If you are on a baseball team and your “destination” is to win the game then you could tie all the opposing team’s shoes together, put butter in their mitts, and replace their bats with balsa wood. This just might win the game. The problem is that it would cross all sorts of important boundaries in order to do so. While there are many ways of arriving at a destination or achieving a goal, not all are the best or the right ways and sometimes we can arrive at the destination having lost who we are in the process because we ignored these boundaries.
For the past several Wednesdays I have been writing about the Mission Statement of Orchard Community Church which is “We exist to make and become fully devoted followers for Christ through the renewing and transforming power of the gospel for the glory of God”. You can read more about the Mission Statement here: part 1; part 2; part 3. The Mission Statement sets a direction or a destination. It is what we believe God wants to do in and through us. But just like a baseball game, there are many ways we could go about doing this and some are much better than others. We need boundaries, like guardrails on a highway, to keep us on track. These are provided by the Core Values.
The Core Values of Orchard Community Church are:
1. Passionately God-Centered
2. Dependent on God
3. Rooted in the Word of God
4. Grace-Driven Transformation
5. Becoming Fully Devoted Followers of Christ
6. Committed to One Another
7. Actively Serving
8. Intentional Outreach
9. Authentic and Passionate Worship
For the next 9 weeks, I will take one of these Core Values each week and look at why it is important, how it keeps us on track, and how we are seeking to do this as a church. My hope is that we will weave these things into everything that we do and that they will become the fabric that holds all of our ministry, worship, and fellowship together. For this week, just look over the list and see if these things are present in your life. Do you see them in your church? Why are they important?
I look forward to working through these 9 things and thinking and praying about how to incorporate them into everything we do as Orchard Community Church.
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I see in the opening verses of Acts 13 that the church in Antioch wholly devoted themselves to keeping their gaze on the the Lord. As a result, God the Holy Spirit, the Resident Commander, was able to speak and be heard and followed.