OUR VISION AND VALUES
LOVING GOD / LOVING OTHER
The focus of Christianity isn’t building buildings or growing large mega churches. The focus of Christianity isn’t leveraging members to exert political power. The focus isn’t making statements of condemnation to individuals that don’t subscribe to our same belief system.
The focus of following Christ is LOVING GOD, and LOVING OTHERS. This is stated all the way back in of the first books of the Bible, Deuteronomy. This command is found in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Paul in the vast majority of his letters reinforces this teaching. If you want to follow Christ, you must love God, love others.At New City Church we have one focus that we try to build everything we do around and that is to:
LOVE GOD through worship and obedience
LOVE OTHERS through acceptance and sacrifice
PLEASURE / PEACE / MEANING / HOPE
As we love God and love others something amazing happens in our lives. Through the outflowing of love toward others, we begin to experience the full blessings of God in our lives. Circumstances stop defining our outlook and even in the midst of great trials we can experience true pleasure, peace, meaning and hope.
Every human is trying to satisfy the each of these desires. We long for pleasure, we strive for peace, we pursue meaning and we chase after hope. But God pours out all of these on us as we simply love him and love others. At New City Church we elevate the belief that the Christian life should be centered around:
Embracing PLEASURE
Pursuing PEACE
Discovering MEANING
Choosing HOPE
GUILT / INDOCTRINATION / INVASION / CONDEMNATION
Over the years religions have become experts in using guilt to try to indoctrinate us into a certain types of behavior. They invade our lives, trying to overtake every aspect of who we are. These are actually the enemies of pleasure, peace, meaning and hope, which means they are the enemy of God.
At New City Church we encourage everyone to take off the chains of religious dogma and begin to live in freedom by refusing to embrace the practices of:
Motivation with GUILT
Steps of INDOCTRINATION
Pressure of INVASION
Shame of CONDEMNATION
ASK / JOIN / SERVE / GROW
You may say, I’ve been following Jesus for a long time, I try to love him and love others. But I’m not experiencing pleasure, peace, meaning and hope. Why not? Maybe it’s because you have chosen not to participate. We have been trained to think that the major role of a Christ follower is to show up once a week, hear a sermon and give some money. That isn’t participating that is spectating.
Participating isn’t just listening or showing up. It isn't giving money or doing tasks. Instead we believe to participate you must:
ASK questions for honest dialogue .
JOIN your life with others for community
SERVE out of your gifts instead of guilt
GROW through discipleship and accountability