GCCC Mission Statement
Follow Jesus…
We believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. As His followers we are called to live our lives as disciples and to make disciples. As disciples, we commit to lives of service, peace and love.
We believe in the Fatherhood of God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We believe that Jesus is the revelation of God’s love to the world. He is Lord over creation and the Savior who rescued us from sin, evil and death. He is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity who came to rescue mankind and restore us to our destiny in accordance with the plan of God that existed before time. We commit to Jesus as both Lord and Savior. We commit to a way of life that seeks to understand all things through the lens of His life, crucifixion and resurrection. We believe that after His resurrection, He ascended into heaven, and that one day He will return to take his Church as his Bride, make all things new, and bring ‘Heaven into the Real World.’ Those who have accepted His invitation to life will live and reign with him forever.
Until that day comes, we believe that we have been called to live as disciples of Jesus. As disciples, we commit to lives of complete obedience to His commandments and way of life. Not one of His teachings can be rationalized away. Every word He spoke and every action He took represents an aspect of how we are to live. We accept the Holy Bible as the divinely inspired, authoritative word of God. Every passage of the Bible must be read through the lens of Jesus’ life, crucifixion and resurrection. While recognizing that we are graciously transformed by Jesus and the Spirit from the inside out, we commit to do our part within the framework of grace to follow Jesus as our moral model and to strive to be like Him in all ways. We will live as He lived, and seek to live out His central command concerning the life of discipleship: ‘love one another, just as I have loved you. the world will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another’ (John 13:34-35).
As disciples of Jesus, we pledge to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). Toward that end, we pledge to be a community of disciples who make disciples. We will go into our community, nation and world and invite persons into relationship with Christ, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that Jesus commanded.
Love Others…
We share the love of God with everyone, touching lives in our community, nation and world. We are committed to reaching others as Jesus did, meeting the spiritual, physical and emotional needs of all people.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we obey the call to go into the whole world to make disciples. We commit to being a church that seeks to reach others so they can know the joy of living with Jesus now and forever.
As persons saved by love and grace, we vow to be agents of love and grace to others. We understand that nothing is beyond Him and no one is beyond His reach.
We will reach out to others as Jesus did, by entering in to the worlds of those around us and walking beside them, wherever they are and whatever they are going through. We will reach out in a manner that sees every person the way Jesus wished us to see them: as if the person before us was in fact Jesus himself (Matthew 25). We therefore acknowledge and affirm the dignity and worth of every person as a person made in the image of God, and agree to strive to make a difference in this world one life at a time, by offering grace, love, forgiveness, and restoration. We understand that this requires us to walk with patience, hope and love and may require us to walk along side and associate with people whom we would not ordinarily associate and to go to places outside our comfort zones.
We recognize that our work for the Kingdom of God requires we engage in both evangelism and social action. We are to make disciples and we do so with evangelistic endeavors with spiritual life development and discipleship education.
Build Community…
We build community through Bible study, fellowship, communion, prayer, service, worship and small group ministry and are there for one another in both good times and bad. We are a community where people with diverse talents and gifts come together to make a difference for our world. We are dedicated to creating a sense of belonging. As we are all one in Christ Jesus, with the uniqueness, worth and preciousness of each individual in the church community. We recognize that we are the Body of Christ, whose life we must embody in the world.
Life as a disciple of Jesus means life in community. Jesus called to Himself a community of disciples who shared with one another, were available to one another and helped one another maintain their walk. After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and gave birth to the Community of the Spirit. The early followers of Jesus lived in spirit-centered community or Koinonia (kay-no-nee-ah) that demonstrated the power of the Spirit to make straight all the crooked relationships in our lives.
We covenant with one another to build community together through Bible study, fellowship, communion, prayer, service, worship, and small group ministry (Acts 2:42-47).
We seek to discern God’s will together. As we do so, we affirm both the Old and New Testament scriptures as the inspired, authoritative word of God.
We live as an expectant community. We expect that God will do and is doing great things in our midst. We live in hopeful expectation of the day of Christ’s return, and life in a heaven infused world.
We accept and celebrate the diversity of people and spiritual gifts within our community. We acknowledge that these gifts have been given for the benefit of the community as a whole.
We commit to creating a sense of belonging. We vow to be a people who care deeply for one another, in both good times and bad. We vow to be a community where no one gets left behind. We are a family, and every person who is willing to have a life-changing encounter with Christ is welcome to become a member of our family. No exceptions.
We are all one in Christ Jesus and we vow to support the uniqueness, worth and preciousness of each individual in the Body of Christ. We believe in the equality of all members of the Body of Christ, and reject as un-biblical any efforts to subordinate any class of persons in it to another (Galatians 3:28).
We do not exist for our own benefit. We are to be a ‘lifehouse’, and have been called together so that the world might see the light and life of Christ’s salvation. Consistent with our principle of reaching others with love and grace, we will turn our ears in sensitive listening to the world around us and seek to bring others into the light of Christ’s salvation. We will work on all levels of human life for reconciliation, justice, peace, and the welfare of all persons. As we Follow Jesus, Love others, and Build Community, it is up to us to bring hope to the world.