Core Values of the Courageous Church

Yesterday we posted the primary strategy of our church plant. The day before that we posted our mission statement. Today we are posting our core values. These things are all a part of us creating a well-conceived project for our church plant before we launch.

For us, core values are basically guiding principles that should help navigate us on our journey. We have written them in the form of six questions that we should ask ourselves as we pursue our mission.

Here they are:

What Did Jesus Do?

Jesus was the living, breathing, walking representation of
God on the Earth and we rely on His body of work to guide our actions as
individuals and as a community of faith. Our creative adventure is to discover 21^st century ways to do
what Jesus did. If we leave some really
cool stuff out in our attempt to do what Jesus did, that’s OK with us.

What Does the Bible
Say?

Too much guesswork is being done in churches today when the
Bible is full of answers and insights that God made available to us. Even though the world has tons of
best-selling books, we choose to use this ancient text as our primary guide and
believe strongly in the power and authority of its words.

Does this Require Faith?

We believe that we should be making decisions, going places,
taking stands, and pursuing goals that would totally fail without God’s
intervention. If our work requires
little to no faith, we’re missing the mark.

How Does this Express
Love?

Love should be at the center of all that we do – so much so
that it doesn’t take a scientist or theologian to interpret the source of our
actions. This does not mean that we
cannot take tough or even controversial stands, but our motives must not be
centered in ambition, anger, hate, envy, popularity, or any other factor other
than a love for God and humanity.

Are Creative Limits
Being Pushed?

Nothing is more creatively beautiful than the amazing
handiwork of God. As His ambassadors on
Earth, God has not called us to operate in bland, one-dimensional grayscale,
but He desires that we push the creative envelope to its limits so that the
full weight of His character can be known and all of the senses of humanity
will be engaged by our good work.

Does this Fulfill our Mission
?

Good ideas are better than bad ideas, but good ideas that
don’t fulfill the mission of our church are a distraction. One of the blessings of knowing that hundreds
of thousands of churches exist around the world is that every church does not
have to be everything to everybody. We
improve the depth and reach of our impact by fighting to remain focused in an
extremely cluttered, blurry world.