OUR MISSION
Grace Church exists to make disciples and plant churches by proclaiming and displaying the grace of God to sinners and sufferers. One way we will do this is by organizing in smaller gatherings and groups. Humans long for deep friendships. We are made for community as image-bearers of God. We are persons-in-relationship because we were created by a God who has always existed as three persons in one. The Christian God is Trinitarian. God himself is in community. Or more accurately, God is community: one God, three persons. Christians are saved to community and grow in community—the communal life of the church.
Community Groups join this mission with the aim to cultivate deep friendships, create a context for discipleship, provide care, and extend the mission of the church. They are a context for growing together in the gospel and living out the “one-anothers” of Scripture.
THE WINS
Gospel-Centered Discipleship: We do not see the gospel as just the entrance but the path we are to walk every day of the Christian life. We believe it is not just the means of our justification, but the means of our transformation. We believe it is not simply deliverance from sin’s penalty, but release from sin’s power. We apply the gospel to one another and ourselves in everyday life (e.g. pride, condemnation, approval, guilt, hopeless, etc.) and we practice the means of grace (i.e. Scripture reading, prayer, confession and repentance) in our group gatherings stirring one another to delight in the Trinity.
Culture of Grace: Our community is authentic, gritty, and raw. We meet in homes and celebrate life with good food and good laughs. We stir one another up to love and good deeds. We don’t hide our sin and suffering but honestly expose it. We respond to one another in prayer and gentleness pointing one another to Jesus. We walk intimately with one another in our sin and suffering. We are transparent, not superficial; brothers and sisters, not acquaintances; known and loved, not disconnected and lonely.
Family Worship: We equip our parents in gospel-centered parenting and incorporate family worship into our Community Group gatherings. Our groups live as families and love one another’s children through teaching, helping, and encouraging.
Compelling Community: By our love for each other we make visible the love of our invisible God. Our Community Groups are an apologetic of the gospel to the non-Christians around us. We bless the greater community we are a part of, not by railing against it from the outside but by loving it from the inside. We care for orphans (and poor) and widows (and single moms) like Jesus.
Multiplication: Leaders are raised up within groups and sent to start new groups with new people so that more people meet Jesus and are cared for within this context of discipleship. Then when we have 3 to 5 groups within a different city (e.g Weatherford, Joshua, Lake Worth) and a qualified planter we will plant a new church.
THE FEEL
Confession: We fight to open up and be honest with our thoughts, fears, desires, sin, and suffering and bring other people into our lives (1 John 1:5-10; 1 Thess 2:8). Fellowship means we intimately share our lives with one another (Acts 2:42-46).
Gospel + Safety + Time = A Church Where Everyone Can Grow by Ray Ortlund:
“Gospel + safety + time. It’s what everyone needs. A lot of gospel + a lot of safety + a lot of time.
Gospel: good news for bad people through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the endless power of the Holy Spirit. Multiple exposures. Constant immersion. Wave upon wave of grace and truth, according to the Bible.
Safety: a non-accusing environment. No embarrassing anyone. No cornering anyone. No shaming. But respect and sympathy and listening and understanding, so that people can exhale and open up and unburden their souls. A church environment where no one seeking the Lord has anything to fear.
Time: no pressure. Not even self-imposed pressure. No deadlines on growth. Urgency, but not hurry, because no one changes quickly. A lot of “space” for complicated people to rethink their lives at a deep level. God is patient.
This is what our churches must be: gentle environments of gospel + safety + time. It’s where we’re finally free to grow.”
Honor: “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10). No flippant put-downs. No undercutting. Not even waiting for the next person to make the first move and open up. But me getting out of my self-concern to lift the next person up with high honor, which is what they deserve. Doing this verbally, unashamedly, openly, gladly.
You’ve never met anyone too encouraged. We honor people for their growth, character, and service. We honor them for how they’ve grown. We honor them for how they responded to that suffering. We honor them for their honest confession of sin. We honor them for how they have served us or served the church. We honor them for their humble attitude. We honor them for their joyful obedience. We honor them for their endurance. We honor them for being hospitable. What a refreshing church that has a habit of honoring one another. Ray Ortlund states outdoing one another in showing honor is “a competition where everyone wins.”
What if our tit for tat wasn’t sarcasm, snarky comebacks, passive aggressive comments, but honor. Honor for honor.
Word and Spirit: We aspire to be a people who are intellectually exhilarated by complex biblical truths and unafraid to give public expression to deep emotional delight and heart-felt affection for Jesus; theologically sophisticated followers of Christ who are hungry for the revelatory gifts of the Spirit while always subject to the final authority of the written text of Scripture. Whereas some say this is impossible, we believe the Scriptures call us to labor in the grace of God for the whole-hearted and passionate embrace of both Word and Spirit.
We minister the Word to one another through the guidance of the Spirit. We are led by the Spirit, willing to stop a conversation and pray for a person, willing to ask a difficult question that the Spirit is stirring within us. We are formed by the Bible, ready and willing to speak the truth in love and build one another up with the comfort of the gospel, and gently challenge one another with the call of the gospel.
Open and Closed: Our groups cap at around 10 adults and when that happens they are closed from Sunday visitors who are already Christians. We are planting this church with evangelism as our top priority not accumulating Christians from other local churches. Now we expect church members from local churches and others moving to our neck of the woods will join us but when that happens we don’t desire to send new visitors directly to current groups filling those groups beyond a “small” group and creating a revolving door. We want our current groups to be small and stable enough to experience deep friendships and focus on bold evangelism.