Creating spaces
for us consists of deep table fellowship around spaces where people naturally gather whether they be tables, front steps, porches and yards. Spaces would also include our communities of faith that would function as house churches within localized neighborhoods, as well as our public social space that would function as a different expression of church, that would consist of a meal, conversations and brief teaching and opportunities to serve.
We would also seek to create spaces for the common good of the neighborhood as well.
To know and be known
is to know deeply other people, this involves listening, holding space and learning their story. To know God deeply, what He is like, paying attention to where He is at work around us and through the lives of others.
To be known involves being vulnerable and knowing ourselves and learning to know ourselves how God sees us. Letting others into our lives to see our brokenness and into our stories. Allowing ourselves to be known by God and to learn more about ourselves.
Love and be loved
to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength is a gift to us because we are first loved by God. We can only love because we are loved to know what love is.
We seek to live into knowing and experiencing God’s love for us and to accept his love of us, so that we can learn to love others and learn how to receive love from others. To love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor the same way.
God
revealed in and through the person of Jesus tells us what God is like. We seek to know God by knowing Jesus, also by knowing the story of the God of Israel and how he interacted with them throughout history. We understand many people and religions have an understanding of God, we seek to learn from all faiths any truths about God, but believe God is ultimately revealed to us in Jesus.
Neighbor
Jesus when asked who is my neighbor, responds with the story of the good Samaritan. We learn from that story that our neighbor extends to those who are even our enemies and hate us. We learn that neighbors are those who are ethnically and racially different from us. That our neighbors may be people we don’t like, but we learn to receive love and care from them. Neighbor to us includes all people made in the image of God. When asked about the greatest commandment Jesus’ response is to love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength and states the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. In stating the second is like it, we find that the two are inextricably linked together and inseparable.
