Mission
(What is our core purpose? Why are we here?)
To be a safe place where everyone can grow together in our love for God, our love for others and our love for the world.
Vision
(How do we practically live out our mission? What do we hope to achieve in a given time?)
In the next year or two…
• Continue to be informed by the re:imagine process in our discipleship, culture, leadership and mission. To live out God’s word to us to be “a Safe Place”.
• To learn the lessons of lockdown and to build on them, rather than returning to how things were before.
• To help people recover from the effects of COVID-19, in our fellowship, in the wider church in Berwick and in our community.
• To prioritise events like social gatherings that will help us to overcome social isolation and the fear of meeting in groups, and will be open to all.
• To develop the mental health and wellbeing work through the “Wellbeing Arts Group”.
• To continue and develop our use of social media, like YouTube and Facebook to engage with our own and the wider community, finding ways to use them in mission and discipleship.
• To encourage everyone to stop seeing the building as the place where everything happens, when we have ‘meetings’, but to see them as the wonderful and underused resource that they are.
• We will repurpose and alter our buildings to make them a more useful and effective resource and tool for serving God in the community.
• We want to spend more time listening to our local community, and discerning where God is already at work outside of our buildings (Missio Dei), so we can join in.
• We want to disciple people in ways that are both educational and relational, to equip them to live for Jesus in the wider world (their frontlines) of home, work, school…the places where we spend most of our time during the week.
• We want to identify and equip new potential leaders. We want to encourage “every member ministry” not just in our gathered worship, but in the wider world.
• To continue to develop expressions of church wherever we find them: in the local gym, in our work with men, with the local businesses in town…things that were already happening prior to lockdown and new things as they come our way.
• To see our church grow, particularly as people follow Jesus for the first time. To welcome Christians who move to the area into our fellowship.
Values
(What are the core beliefs that influence everything we do?)
Bible-based
• Regularly reading and studying the scriptures
• Trying to put what we read into practice in our everyday lives
• Learning to listen and hear from God through the scriptures
Worship together
• Growing in love and thankfulness to God
• Praising and worshipping God for who he is and what he’s done
• Regularly remembering Jesus through Communion
• Meeting regularly for gathered worship, In our building and online
• Using the spiritual and natural gifts God has given us to build one another up
Making Disciples
• Helping people find faith in Jesus and be baptised
• Encouraging them to grow more like him
• Enabling them to be active in God’s family, the church
• Not seeing church as a building but as gathered Christians,
wherever they may be.
Praying continually
• Teaching and encouraging a daily prayer habit
• Coming together for corporate times of prayer, regularly and for special requests
• Sharing answers to prayer regularly, to encourage one another
• Fostering an atmosphere of thanksgiving and gratitude to God
Being Caring
• Growing caring relationships within the church family
• Being an inclusive church
• Welcoming anyone who is seeking or following Jesus
• Creating a safe place for people, regardless of race, wealth, gender, age and disability
• Allowing freedom of interpretation on secondary doctrines
Serving Others
• Discovering our gifts and calling
• Encouraging the use of those gifts in the church and the wider community
• Listening to our communities and finding ways to share God’s love with them
Being Missional
• Learning to share our faith in the place God has placed us
• Looking out for what God is doing in our communities and joining in (Missio Dei)
• Sending and supporting those who are called to serve God at home and overseas