Showing posts with label uniqueness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uniqueness. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2011

8 Things I Love About VCMJ

What makes my church unique? Here are a few things I love...

1. It's multi-cultural. Almost every time new people come to our church they comment on how cool it is that we are so multi-cultural. Of course, we don't always even notice because it's normal to us. By Canadian standards Moose Jaw is not a really multi-cultural city...unless you come to Victory Church. What a joy to see people from dozens of different cultures coming together to worship the King of Kings.

2. High Energy. Coming to a place where we celebrate the goodness of God and His gospel of love ought to be a place of life, joy and passion. Dry, boring, and slow are not words that describe our church or our services. It's great to come to a place and be a part of a place that lifts and encourages people.

3. Transformation. We are a "high grace", "high challenge" people. That is, we value high levels of grace and acceptance where people can come as they are and be authentic and real about their struggles. We are human, we mess up and blow it lots. But we don't wallow in our brokenness. We are a people that challenge one another to grow and change. We have a culture of learning. We are constantly pressing forward for personal change and corporate change. Want to stay in a safe, low challenge environment where not much changes? We're not the place for you. But if you want to be somewhere that you are challenged to believe that with God you can change anything and everything about yourself that needs improvement...welcome to the family!

4. Generational. We love and invest in young people. We love and honour the elderly. We are a family friendly place (in fact, we are sometimes overwhelmed with tons of fun little kids!). We invest heavily in children and youth ministries and believe they are a huge part of our stewarding the call of God on our church. We work hard at encouraging generations to invest in and receive from one another. We are setting up the next generation for success in God.

5. City Loving. We have a heart for our city. We long to see God's Kingdom established more and more in our community. We partner together with other groups who have the same vision to see God reign in our area and we love doing whatever we can to express God's love to our community.

6. God-saturated. We are utterly convinced that we need God for and with everything we are and do. We are apologetically Bible saturated, prayer saturated, worship saturated and Jesus-centered. We actually believe that Jesus really is the answer to human beings deepest problems.

7. Serving, Giving and helping those in need. We are dedicated to giving and being generous in ways that actually cost us sacrifice and personal discomfort. We give to missions locally and internationally. We are constantly looking for ways to be a blessing within our fellowship, within our community and within our world.

8. Writing the last seven things has made me feel somewhat guilty as I know our faults and "underbelly" is far from perfect. All of the above things are indeed unique traits of VCMJ and part of who God has called us to be in this community at this time. But we do none of them perfectly and long to do them all far better. We are an imperfect group of people who get the privilege of working with God to establish something beautiful land powerful here in Moose Jaw. To see people flourish as they embrace God's person, principles and purposes in their lives. Our future is bright because the Light of the World is our Leader. We do have a vision, we are pressing on to achieve all that God has called us to in Christ.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

What Makes You Rant? Pt 2

Is it poor customer service?
The environment or politics?
Wasted government money?
Is it the lack of care for hurting people you see?
Is it when people who could have a good life make poor choices and destroy their lives?
Is it when the church is dead, boring and irrelevant to society?
Is it the emptiness that people experience without Christ in their lives?
Is it the glory of God?

Whatever it is, it would be good to get clarity on it. Maybe even decide if it is something worth being bothered about. Some "rants" are more noble than others. Once you pick one or two things that you can authentically rant about...find ways to rant that add value. Don't just rant just because you are mad or critical; be careful of ranting in a way that turns people off. Rant in such a way that people will listen and that it will genuinely make a positive difference. (I am sure that's a Bible verse somewhere in the Message version) 

You have a unique rant that our world needs.

In our church we have some people passionate about prayer; they would like us to pray more and more and more and more. We have others passionate about evangelism; they would like to us do more and more and more of that. We have some people passionate about social justice; they would like us to do more and more and more of that. The list goes on (the Word, worship, friendships, discipleship, love, unity, marriage and family etc., etc., etc.)... and we need each of these people to appropriately hold up the value of their passion.

We also need to listen to and receive value from each other's rants.