Our Practices
Why spiritual practices?
Our mission is to build bridges to God and community. Jesus spent time teaching his followers how to do this by using spiritual disciplines or practices. These practices helped the followers grow as disciples, or deeply committed followers who grew to live and act as Jesus did.
So these practices are like push-ups and squats for physical development - they help us grow spiritually. And this is how Jesus lived and taught. We fondly call these our 'bubbles' and use them to organize our faith life through our programs and budgets
We have a 'quiz' that we use to see where we are in our spiritual development as disciples of Jesus. After taking the quiz we can pick areas of our spiritual lives where we want to grow and mature.
Our first practice is to pray. We pray privately with daily devotions and we pray together through worship and retreats.
As we pray we build our relationship directly with God - we come to know God so we can love and serve God. This is how we can follow Micah 6:8 and walk humbly with our God.
Do the Practice: We encourage people to pray daily as individuals and gather weekly together, either in person or online.
Part of loving God and loving our neighbor is sharing our story of God's grace and love with others.
We don't stand around handing out tracts and booklets to people. Rather, we let people know how God is working in our lives, and how our church is working with our neighbors.
Our Outreach Team organizes events to connect with neighbors, such as through our Gratitude Project. Our Hospitality Team welcomes people who connect with our church.
Do the Practice: We encourage everyone to invite at least one person to a church activity each year.
Our faith life is a life-long spiritual journey, with many twists and turns, and maybe some stops along the way. We think it helps to be part of a group on our journeys.
We encourage everyone to be part of a Learn group that keeps curiosity alive and challenges us to keep moving.
We offer four levels of groups for learning - think of our physical phases as infants, children, teens and adults. Our first level is short and sweet as we are getting started. The second level has classes as we learn basic skills. The third level lets us make more choices as we decide what we are interested in and what skills we need to develop. The fourth level is where we keep learning but we also take responsibility for helping others grow and develop.
Do the Practice: We encourage everyone to be part of a group and take at least one class every year.
As we learn to know and love God, we develop a desire to serve God. Jesus calls us to love God with our hearts, minds and bodies and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We also believe that Jesus brings new life through the transformation of lives and community.
Through service, we love God as we love our neighbors, and we work with God to bring transformation.
Following Micah 6:8, we try to live lives seeking justice while acting with mercy. Our Justice Team helps us learn about systemic injustice, and ways we can be allies to people marginalized in our communities. Our Mercy Team focuses on projects that make a difference in individual lives.
Do the Practice: We encourage everyone to find a place in the community to volunteer monthly as individuals, and pick one way to serve our faith community.
God encourages us to live lives of generosity. Our financial gifts to church support our ministry to God and our neighbors. We give because we trust God and want to support a ministry that connects people to God and community.
Do the Practice: Following God's instructions in the Bible, we encourage people to give a tithe, or 10% of their income, or start working toward that goal.
