Transparency is Empowering

Sometimes I get a on band-wagons a little late.  This past week I started and finished Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner (2005).  Chapter 2 (“How is the Klu Klux Klan Like a Group of Real Estate Agents?”) looks at how people use information to manipulate others.

Knowledge is power, especially when one small group has it and uses it against another.

So if knowledge is power that must mean transparency is empowering.

I want to empower you by filling you in on what we’re doing and why.  I’m done with surprises, done with gotcha’s!, done with come-and-see. Why? Cause I believe that the things we’re doing are worth your time and investment and that you’re more willing to buy-in when you know as much as you can about what I’m asking you spend the best years of your life on.

This is what we want to see God do in us all:

Our Mission:  A community of college-age men and women exchanging self for Christ.

Our Vision: When discipleship is done people who have fully exchanged self for Christ look like this:

• People who freely worship;
• People who live lives of total surrender to God;
• People who take the initiative for their own spiritual growth;
• People who pursue the knowledge of God;
• People who replicate spiritual growth and maturity in others;
• People whose romantic relationships reflect biblical ideals;
• People who support the work of God in the Church through giving;
• People who meet the needs of others;
• People who reject legalism;
• People who connect with outsiders;
• People who prepare themselves spiritually for the sake of others;
• People who talk about Jesus with the people in their lives; and
• People who clearly understand and believe the Gospel (i.e. God, sin, Christ, faith).
• People who support the ministry of the church with their finances and time.

Our Values:

• worship. the mature child of praise and submission. Praise without submission is cheap talk. Submission without praise is cold religion.
• engage. connecting with the faith and the faithful.  Jesus doesn’t call people to a decision; He calls them to throw themselves into a life and into a people.
• love. word and deed, heart and hand.  God has formed us into a new people, a new nation, a new family. God’s people care for each other in every sense of the word.
• declare. revealing the message about Jesus.  In everything we tell and re-tell God’s story written with human lives so that others may join in Worship, Engage, Love, and Declare.

What’s all this mean?  In the coming weeks I’ll be explaining these ideas one-by-one so each one gets the best, most focused treatment it can.