Things are going well with renovate, our church plant. We've been working very hard through the summer and this fall developing the core values and defining the mission of our church. Though it's a work in progress, I would like to share with you some of what we've done.
RENOVATE VALUES:
We Value People– We have a strong belief in individuals, creating a culture of grace which accepts people, helping them to belong before they believe and appreciating our diversity and seeking unity in the midst of it.
We Value Community– We believe that we best live out our faith in community with other people, engaging each other on our spiritual journey. We believing in being culturally relevant and keeping the message of faith simple.
We Value Spirituality– We are Christian, believing that Jesus is the one and only way to God, that he came to give us a personal relationship with God. In that value we desire to help people grow through spiritual mentoring, experiential and creative worship, and teaching spiritual disciplines, a balanced spiritual giftedness, and emphasizing Christlikeness.
We Value Character– We believe that Christ calls us to strive to the highest character, lived out in attributes such as: love, integrity, sincerity, kindness, honesty, open-mindedness, optimistic, hopeful, and realistic.
We Value Mission– We believe that all these values include mission, which encompasses meeting needs of those around us, areas of social justice ("glocal"=global and local), and taking the message of grace to those who need to hear it.
The scripture that helps define our mission is:
"You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again."
Isaiah 58:12
We are excited about what is in our future, and ask you to keep praying for us to follow God's plan for renovate and that we will reach those who God has called us to minister to and introduce to the great grace of God.
If you are in the Fairmont area, you are invited to join us for our Advent series beginning this weekend. We are studying a series called Advent Conspiracy. You can watch a short video about the premise of this series on You Tube here. Its a program that we're going to do for Advent to focus our attention on the real meaning of Christmas and also raise money for clean water around the world. $10 can give a child clean water for life! Americans spend $450,000,000,000 a year on Christmas, but to solve the clean water issue globally would only cost $10 billion. What if we spent less, loved more, worshipped fully this year, and gave ourselves?
We will meet at 812 Morgantown Avenue in Fairmont on November 15, December 6 and December 20 at 6:30 PM. (We may meet at a different venue for our meeting on the 20th, but we will let you know that as soon as we do.) We invite you to join us and make this a special Advent season. Thank you for your love and support for Grace Unlimited Ministries and renovate.
Much love to all of you!
John Carnes
