Values
1. The Transforming Gospel: the power behind everything we believe and do.
Personal transformation: The gospel is not merely information, but a bold announcement: that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - proclaimed as grace - provides the power to heal and forgive, and to change human hearts and lives.
Cultural transformation: The gospel not only changes people, but challenges the value systems of this world; those changed by grace produce culture that reflects life lived the way it is supposed to be lived before the face of God.
Social transformation: The gospel wipes out categories that people use to divide the human race (race, economics, politics), and creates one people united in Jesus Christ by grace, for life with dignity, value and purpose in the world.
2. The City: the divinely appointed ministry target for our church’s ministry.
The place we serve: In love, Jesus came to serve, not to be served. We are saved by God's gracious call to love and serve Jacksonville and seek its blessing.
The hope we have: The church exists for the city, not the city for the church. Our purpose is to bring the gospel to the people of the city, to impact life on its streets and in its homes, and to bring change to the values it embraces.
The global city: Our gaze is not limited but expands to the broader "city" of this world, whom we would help to reach through strategic partnerships with other church planting gospel movements.
3. The Church: a gathering of people being transformed by the gospel.
An authentic community: The gospel enables people to be honest about sins and weakness because their hope lies not in their own religious traditions or moral performance but in Christ’s alone. This authentic fellowship is experienced in dynamic relationships of trust and love in a world that is losing such community.
On a mission: The church is the one institution which exists ultimately for the sake of its non-members. Each ministry of the church exists to enable members to pursue purposeful relationships with nonbelievers as they live life for Christ.
Through multiplication: The most effective way to reach a city with the gospel is to plant highly relational small groups and congregations in its various communities.
