“Being church” in such a way that counteracts the negative connotations of what “church” means to our current culture and allows us to follow our calling to live our faith in a transformative way, to include the following:

Inspired: acquiring an identity based on who God is calling us to be in the community we are planted in and who we are to be in community with.  This will involve an organic understanding of planting, that the growth of the faith community is inspired by the seeds God plants in that particular community as we strive to incarnate the gospel.

Commissioned: living as disciples of Christ 24/7 who seek to be “missional” in the local community we find ourselves, which will involve us reaching to meet their physical and spiritual needs.  Christ commissioned the disciples to go out into the world and make disciples, not to stay in the church building and solely serve one another.

Created: as children of God, we have been created with unique gifts to share with one another.  Those gifts will be shared in the faith community through authentic worship gatherings that arise out of a holistic sense of identity and relationship with the local community. 

Engaged: planting a church in the current culture, we will be engaged with it so that we are speaking the same language but will be living in a way that engages counter-cultural values.  We will be faced with cultural challenges (materialism, narcissism, etc.) that will be counteracted with Christ-like attributes (your treasure is where your heart is, loving your neighbor, etc.).