Scripture:

How can anyone say they know about God let alone know God?  Only because God has made himself known.  We believe He’s done so reliably in what is called the Bible, so we read and study and try to live in light of what’s been written. (See 2 Timothy 3:14-17)

The Gospel (Good News) of Jesus:

The Gospel is good news of GRACE–of unmerited kindness, of not being able to save ourselves and not having to try or pretend to try, of a new identity NOT in performance but in being so loved that I’m died for.  We celebrate the freedom to be real/honest about who we are on our own AND who we are in Jesus.

The Gospel is good news of MEANING for all of life, of SIGNIFICANCE for the sake of God, of the power to be CHANGED.  We celebrate the freedom to be courageous and become what we’re made to be.

The Gospel is good news of RESURRECTION.  Death is not the end.  Leprosy doesn’t win the day.  Redemption is possible; the curse can be overturned!  We celebrate the freedom to grieve the real brokenness and fallenness and sadness in the world with real HOPE that one day, someday, all things will be made new. (See Philippians 3)

A Worshiping Community:

Worship is our response to the good news of the Gospel.  We worship God for his greatness and his kindness in weekly public worship gatherings and by living for him daily with our lives. (See Hebrews  10:24-25; 12:1-2)

Community is where this good news of the Gospel gets lived out.  We’re made for community yet we’re starved for it in our busy, compartmentalized, hi-tech lives.  The freedom of the Gospel to be accepted, changed and hopeful becomes real as we live it out together in relationships.  (See Ephesians 2:11-22)

The Kingdom of Jesus:

After Jesus rose from the dead, he said that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him.  He is in charge of the universe–all of it.  So, as Michael Williams wrote in Far as the Curse is Found, “Nothing matters but the Kingdom of Jesus, but because of the Kingdom of Jesus, everything matters.” (See Matthew 28:18-20).  That means a couple things very important to us:

Our whole life matters.  We want to be Christians and do things Christianly in all aspects of life.  All of what we do matters as part of Jesus’s mission and kingdom.  All aspects of life need to be redeemed.  If the effects of fallenness touch every part of the human person, so, too, redemption must touch every part! (How Now Shall We Live by Colson and Pearcey).

Our whole world matters.  Jesus is making all things new .  We who have been and are being redeemed become agents of redemption in the world and want to push against the effects of sin and brokenness in the world wherever we find them. (See Revelation 21:1-5, 25-26)

The Cities (i.e. Minneapolis and St. Paul):

They matter to God and so matter to us.  We are here for the good of the cities in which we live.  We are committed to being within the city limits of St. Paul/Minneapolis and laboring to bless their poor and professional, their schools and their neighborhoods, their artists and their academics. (See Jeremiah 29:4-11, especially verse 7, and Jonah 4:10-11)

Campus Ministry:

We love college students and are committed to seeing this Gospel good news proclaimed in the market place of ideas that is our college campuses.  Our denomination has a campus ministry called RUF.  We currently host and support RUF at the U of M (see the college student page) and will be committed to expanding that ministry around the Twin Cities and the state.

Church Planting:

One of the greatest ways the kingdom of Jesus grows is through the starting of new churches.  We intend to always be a church-planting church, looking for ways to multiply Gospel-centered, Jesus-worshiping, city-serving communities throughout the Twin Cities and beyond.