What Us is…

The invitation of Jesus isn’t, “Hey, come and think about a bunch of stuff…” No, the invitation of Jesus is, “Come, follow me, and let me show you a better way to be human.  The goal of our faith is action, its movement, it’s real life…really lived, which is why we are a community united around 3 Common Practices

More about Us…

We are not alone

We are convinced that there is more to reality than what we can explain, understand, study in our labs, or contain in our doctrines. There is a transcendent, deeply personal God that is for us, with us, and ahead of us—who is responsible for our existence, incessantly drawing us closer, bringing us together and pulling us forward.  

The Gospel is good news

Jesus reveals God is most clearly seen and experienced through the person and work of Jesus Christ…and this is really good news!  

Jesus shows us who God is. Richard Rohr once said, "Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us, but instead Jesus came to change our mind about God.” The God revealed to us in Jesus is way better, and at the same time way more unsettling, than anything we could have come up with ourselves.  

Jesus also shows us who we are meant to be and what life looks like when it is lived to the fullest. We are convinced that the way of Jesus is the most beautiful way to live. It is definitely not easy, but it certainly is good.  

The events of the first Easter (the death and resurrection of Jesus) have set us free from sin and death and brought about the beginning of God’s new creation right here in the middle of this one. When we embrace the saving love of God for ourselves and identify with Christ’s sacrificial death we begin to wake up to who we truly are and experience life in all of its fullness.  

But wait, there’s more—we have also been given the Holy Spirit, which is the unique abiding presence of God that makes the truth of the gospel real in our lives and empowers us to play a part in the healing and restoration of the world.  

Life is a gift

In the creation poem found at the beginning of the scriptures God uses a word over and over again to describe what is created—the word is good. In the original language of the scriptures the word for good isn't referring to creation’s usefulness or moral quality—this word is referring to how jaw-droppingly beautiful it all is. We like to think it’s God saying, “Wow!”  

We are convinced that life is best lived with a sprit of wonder and a practice of gratitude. At the same time how we treat the gift says an awful lot about our heart towards the Giver. A proper response to this big fat gift that we call our lives is a commitment to stewardship and generosity.   

Everyone belongs 

We live in a world that loves to draw lines and pick sides. We aren’t a big fan of all that because one of the things we have recognized, in both the scriptures and in our own experience is that God’s grace loves to jump over all of our lines and extend itself to the people we least expect it to. Sin separates—Jesus reconciles. In light of this we are convinced that one of the best ways we can witness to the Gospel is to be a place where everyone—EVERYONE belongs.  

*In regards to the issue of human sexuality, we recognize that in our day and age this conversation is a complicated one. We want to be a community where we are free to disagree on the specifics, but where we all agree that everyone is FULLY invited to the table.  

Justice matters   

We believe that when God called the world good, God meant it and so we believe that this world and the people in it are worth fighting for. The hope we have in Jesus is not to escape this world and leave it behind, but to be a part of seeing it set right

Open-Handed Conviction

A conviction isn’t just a belief that takes up space in your brain—it is something that gets into your bones. A conviction doesn’t simply alter the way you think—it drives the way you live. A conviction isn’t something you can ignore or rationalize your way out of—it calls you out on all of that—it haunts you. In many ways we don’t have our convictions…our convictions have us. Convictions are absolutely necessary because they are what lead us to live life with direction and intentionality. The best way to live and the most life giving choices are often counter-intuitive and certainly counter-cultural. Doing whatever we want whenever we want doesn’t lead us toward freedom, or joy, but instead it leads us toward slavery and despair. 

We long to be a people of conviction—a people who live life on purpose.

Our convictions matter, but so does the way in which we hold them. 

Our community takes it name from an encounter with the resurrected Jesus that is found in Luke 24. Two followers of Jesus were walking on a road to a town called Emmaus, when Jesus approached them and here’s the fascinating part—the text seems to suggest that Jesus kept them from recognizing who he was. Jesus introduced a sense of ambiguity, a sense of not-knowing, into their lives.

If you’re anything like me than you have probably (hopefully) changed your mind about some really important stuff over the last 5-10-15 years. In light of this, do you think there are some things you will think differently about 5-10-15 years from now? I sure hope so, because that’s what living things do—they grow—they change.  

So yes, having convictions is absolutely necessary, but perhaps just as important as the convictions that we have is the way in which we hold them. We are convinced the best way to hold our convictions is with an open hand—with a posture of humility that is open to being wrong, that is open to seeing more clearly, that is open to letting things go. 

This helps to explain why we are a community that is more than ok with questions and we are passionate about creating room for people to breath. We are not afraid of uncertainty or ambiguity, but we welcome it because we have found that God meets us there in this really powerful way, just like Jesus met the two on the road to Emmaus.   

Whole Hearted Living

Reading through the scriptures, it seems that the Gospel’s first and most fundamental focus is not on life after death, but instead it is on life before death. Following Jesus is about learning to be, in practice, who we truly are. 

In the creation story found at the beginning of the scriptures, the author describes the first human beings, living in paradise, by telling us they were naked and they knew no shame. They were so at peace with their Creator, with themselves, and with each other that they could be completely exposed and totally vulnerable and feel absolutely no shame. Unfortunately the story takes a sharp turn when these first humans buy into the lie that God was holding out on them and they reach for the one thing that God had established as off limits and the immediate result is that these humans beings, for the first time in their lives become aware of their nakedness—and they hide.   

The thing about these stories is that we are meant find ourselves in them—this story is our story too, isn’t it? We know all about hiding. 
Dallas Willard once said that growing up is really just a matter of learning to control your face. For the most part kids aren’t very good at controlling their face muscles. If you want to know what they are thinking or feeling, just look at their face. They haven’t learned how to hide what is going on on the inside—but, tragically they will learn won’t they? They will be hurt, betrayed, misunderstood. They will experience rejection and abandonment. They will be praised for their accomplishments and ridiculed for their failures and as a result they will learn to hide.  

We know all about hiding. 

In light of this we want to take up Jesus' invitation to what we call wholehearted living. The most concise definition of what we understand wholehearted living to be is simply life as an open book. It’s a life lived with nothing to fear, nothing to hide, nothing to prove, and everything to offer.  

WIDE-EYED PARTICIPATION

The first person in the scriptures to name God is a woman by the name of Hagar. She was an Egyptian slave who served the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sara. You can read about her in Genesis 16, but when she and her baby are sent off into the wilderness, she cries out to God to rescue them and God shows up and provides for their needs. Tamar names God El Roi, which means, “The God who sees me.”

The great story of the Exodus, when the nation of Israel was delivered out of Egypt and freed from slavery, begins with God saying saying to Moses, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.”

There’s this great encounter in the gospels between Jesus and this woman who had a debilitating condition that left her hunched over. Her ailment would have put her on the outside of her community. The assumption would have been that her condition was the result of some sort of sin that God was punishing. In Luke 13 it says, “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”

When Jesus saw her…you have to wonder how long it had been since anyone “saw” her…

We have a God who sees and we long to be a people who see as well. 

Taking up the invitation to participate with our lives often begins from a place of disruption—when our eyes are opened to something in our world that just isn’t ok. 

This is one of things that makes the way of Jesus so counter cultural. Our part of the world is obsessed with comfort and security and encourages us to get as much as we can, as fast as we can, and hold on to it for as long as we can. The way of Jesus calls us to not turn a blind eye toward the injustice of the world, but to go looking for it. When Jesus calls us to take up our cross he isn’t calling us to simply endure the random difficulty that comes our way, but to intentionally look for suffering in the world and then do something about it. 

We want to be a church that incites wide-eyed participation. We will be diligent in partnering with people and organizations in the Midlands who are working hard to change their communities and at the same time we want to be an epicenter of new and creative ways to bring good into the world.