What is Essential to Our Communities

Contemplative:  We Intentionally attune our lives to God by becoming aware of and responding to the Spirit molding our hearts to the heart of God.

Self-reflection: We take the time to examine our thoughts, attitudes, actions and motivation, seeking the inner freedom to love God, self and others without hesitation.

Belovedness: We seek in prayer the experience of being fully seen and wonderfully embraced by God’s overwhelming healing presence.

Discernment:  The Spirit guides our decision making process. We carefully listen in prayer and communal dialogue to receive, hold, and respond to the revelation of God’s will, word, or direction.

Scripture:  When interpreted correctly, the Word of God is the authoritative word in life and faith. It is the ever-faithful witness that leads us to the Living Word. 

Vulnerability: The practice of being reflectively open and honest to God and others. We practice exposing our souls and inviting others into a shared communion with the essence of our unguarded being.

Belonging: We work to build a community culture where we are free to bring our full authentic self and where our gifts are evoked and embraced.

Compassionate Learning Posture:  We maintain a Christ-centered wide tent politically, philosophically, and ideologically creating space for diverse perspectives. We resist choosing sides on controversial social issues in favor of inviting compassionate dialogue in a spirit of mutual growth and learning for the benefit of the whole community.

Missional Spiritual Formation: Our formational work toward Christ’s likeness in personal and communal growth is inseparable from active participation in God’s mission in the world.

Covenant Community:  We are an Apostolic (sent) Covenant Community. We each commit to the values stated here and practices that reinforce this way of life. Each of us find creative ways to live out this spirituality in our individual context.

God’s Shalom Kingdom: We work for the day where all interdependent beings live in harmony, goodness and wholeness with God and all of God’s creation. 

Radical Hospitality:  Philoxenia – We seek out and welcome the stranger, the outcast, and least of these into our community. This welcome seeks to provide for needs and heal brokenness of those on the margins. We see this act as a prophetic witness to the world. 

Justice: All humans are created in the image of God.  We are unified against any action that violates human dignity including violence, oppression, and injustice of any kind.  We seek to restore right relationship with both victim and perpetrator. 

Solidarity of the Marginalized:  Through designing our life in proximity to the marginalized, we take on their perspective, embracing their joys and sorrows as our own. We stand with all people against structural injustices and fight for systemic remedies.  

Calling:  God calls us to a broken place in the world that when we offer ourselves in healing service our own soul is healed.