Vision & Mission

Our Vision: To make the love of God real in the real world

Our vision is to be part of God’s vision for his Church. It is the purpose of every church, of the Church, to be the body of Christ. Jesus Christ was and is God in the flesh. He is God in a real, flesh and blood human body, showing us what God is like – right here in the real world. When we look at Jesus we see what God is like, and the Bible tells us that God is love. So Jesus is the embodiment of love, making God’s love real and tangible. Jesus is what the love of God looks like. And when he came in human flesh Jesus entered this real, messed up, broken world as a real person, showing us what God was really like right here in the middle of all the mess.

Our understanding is that the Church, as the body of Christ, is to continue to do that. Jesus told his followers ‘as the Father has sent me, so am I sending you’ – sending us right into the middle of the mess to embody God. Sending us right among narky neighbours, difficult colleagues, troubled children; among mental health challenges, fragmented relationships; among broken bodies and bruised souls. Sending us into the real world to continue to embody the love of God. To show the world what God looks like, what love looks like. Our vision, therefore, is to be a church that looks like Jesus, making the love of God real in the real world.

Our Mission: To be a church loved into life and living in love

This is how we make the love of God real: by experiencing and expressing that love and helping others to do so. The God revealed in Jesus Christ has loved us into life. This God is a loving Father made real to us by the Holy Spirit. We go on experiencing his love continually and increasingly and it makes us more and more fully alive and whole. On the foundation of this experience of God’s love and life, we are being formed and shaped into a community who love one another. People who are learning to live in the same kind of love with which God has loved us. And then learning to make this love real to people in the real world – to our neighbour, to the stranger, to the marginalised and even to our enemies. Being loved into life and living in love is not just about what we do but is about who we are.