Living in Love

In the article for the summer newsletter, we focused on the first part of our mission statement, loved into life. This month we are turning our focus on to the second phrase, living in love. God’s unconditional love has loved us into life and then produces a family which in turn reflects that same kind of love.

This is what living in love looks like:

  1. It is rooted in the self-giving love of the crucified Christ. Our journey as a family is shaped by the story of God’s love which centres on his sacrifice on the cross. We call this story the gospel and it is central to all we are about as a church family.
  2. We are learning how to love one another well. As a church family we want to learn how love each other with the same kind of love with which he has loved us! Jesus said this is how people will know we are his disciples (John 13:34-35).
  3. We are seeking to create a culture in which people are transformed by this love. Love becomes the hallmark of our cultural ‘ecosystem’, or atmosphere, that is created by God’s life and love, and which has power to transform.
  4. We express this culture of love in a variety of spaces and places. This culture is not just experienced in meetings of the church family, but in a wide variety and diversity of relational spaces that exist inside our building and wherever the church reaches out.
  5. Every person gets to be loved unconditionally, and we especially embrace those on the margins. Jesus reached out to those who were marginalised, overlooked or excluded. In doing so, he demonstrated that he loved everyone unconditionally. We seek to follow his example.
  6. People are welcomed and accepted wherever they are at on their journey. People don’t just get to belong if they believe the right things or behave in the acceptable way. We are all at different stages on our journeys and all are loved along the way.
  7. We are witnesses to this kind of love in our everyday worlds. This love is not just for when the church family is gathered together. It is to increasingly characterise each of our lives in our various everyday worlds – our neighbourhoods, workplaces etc.
  8. Making the love of God real is how we seek the welfare of our town. We have been called to seek the welfare of our town, and we do this best by living in this kind of love so that the love of God is made real in the real world.