MISSION VISION & VALUES
MISSION (What we DO)
To encourage, equip, and challenge congregations[3], broader faith expressions[4], covenant partners, and their leaders, as they share the love and shalom[5] of Jesus Christ.
VISION (Who we want to become)
Becoming a diverse, hospitable, innovative presbytery where ministries can thrive, servant leaders grow, and communities are engaged.
VALUES EXPLAINED
● Christ-centered, Prophetic
○ Our lives are grounded in the event of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
○ We strive to see with the eyes of Jesus, hear with the ears of Jesus, love with the heart of Jesus, act as the hands of Jesus, and speak with the voice of Jesus.
○ We embrace our call as Christ’s prophets. We pursue God’s truth and bear witness to the life of God’s Spirit in our midst. We notice, confess, speak, and act when we and others are not aligned with Christ’s commands. Likewise, we declare and celebrate the in-breaking of Christ’s Good News and its power to restore, reconcile, heal, and renew.
● Community-Focus
○ Engaging the community is more important than preserving an institution.
○ Encouraging facility use and resources to shift toward community engagement.
● Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)
○ We demonstrate radical hospitality.
○ Nurture faith for generational transformation.
○ Develop leaders who are diverse, inclusive and adaptive.
○ Matthew 25 focus: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism, eradicating systemic poverty
● Generative
○ To be generative is to generate, dream, create, renew, originate, and be part of the generating word of God. We are made new as we join with the creative One who makes all things new.
○ Vision and revisioning (generativity) are always part of our life together, not a once-in-a-while episode.
○ We respond to the creativity of the Spirit with flexibility, encouragement, and trust.
● Letting Go
○ We are willing to lament and sacrifice as a Presbytery and let go of habits, attitudes, ministries, processes, and values that no longer serve to make room for new life.
● Partnering
○ We value and encourage partnerships of all kinds wherever mutual mission alignment can be achieved.
● Tension-Bearing
○ We know there are persistent tensions in every community. We listen, model and bear them with grace except in those circumstances when we discern God’s will to stand clearly as God’s prophetic witness.
● Trustworthy
○ Demonstrating competence, Christian character, and goodwill in all that we do. Ensuring processes exhibit appropriate, healthy engagement, and transparency.
THE INVITATION
Participate in, pray for, and be transformed by what God is doing in our midst.
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[1] Each congregation, new witnessing community, or partner agency necessarily needs to identify who is their community(ies). That could be the local geographic neighborhood, an international partner, an immigrant, cultural, or language group, a particular demographic or psychographic, or other as defined.
[2] “But seek the welfare of the city...and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7, NRSV)
[3] This mission & vision is a DenPres way of saying what our Book of Order says about presbyteries: “providing encouragement, guidance, and resources to its congregations in the areas of mission, prophetic witness, leadership development, worship, evangelism, and responsible administration to the end that the church’s witness to the love and grace of God may be heard in the world...and all congregations become communities of faith, hope, love, and witness. “(G-3.0301)
[4] “Broader faith expressions” encompasses new worshipping communities, missional communities, new church developments, fellowships, and other fresh forms of Christ’s church that may develop. We are in a time of creativity beyond the inherited church form of the congregation and want to give God’s spirit room to breathe new life into what forms those expressions take!
[5] Shalom - The presence of community well-being, justice, wholeness, right relationship with one another. Much deeper than its most oft-translation: peace.