COMMON Creed

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Our Purpose

 

Our Vision

Our vision is to bring singles into "community", and enable them to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ that serve Him wherever they are.

Our Mission

Our mission is to create a regional community of singles that invites singles to meet the living Jesus Christ, and equips them to honor God with their time, treasure, and talents.

Our Values

Values are the behaviors and practices that believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ produces in our lives and that we wish to reinforce. These behavioral values help us achieve our goals and accomplish our mission.

HONORING GOD FIRST

We encourage one another to seek God and His glory first in all that we do, with our time, talents, and treasure. This value will highlight the priority of prayer, Scripture, and biblical preaching and teaching. Furthermore, we will honor Him by worship, faith, repentance, love, and grateful obedience.
"Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through Him."
Colossians 3:17
"Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits"
Proverbs 3:9-10

LOVING ONE ANOTHER

We value the development of loving relationships in which we are built up and encouraged by the way we treat each other. The grace of God in Jesus Christ is freely given to us as very sinful people. His grace transforms us so that we love others as we have been so freely and generously loved. This value highlights affirmation, devotion, appreciation, honesty, integrity, forgiveness, acceptance, accountability, joy, warmth, humility, and truth in our relationships with one another. Families and singles become encouragers of others because of the power of the Gospel at work in their lives and in our community.
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another"
John 13:34-35

DEVELOPING PEOPLE

We encourage Christian maturity by growing and developing one another into the character and likeness of Christ. We take seriously the responsibility to nurture, train, and equip one another as believers and leaders, so that we are becoming spiritually mature from the inside out. We help one another to develop in the areas of ministry for which each has been gifted by God, to make a valuable contribution to the kingdom of God and its advance in the world. This enables us to serve God and others more effectively in light of God's call and claim upon our lives.
"[Leadership gifts are given to the church] for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ"
(NASB) Ephesians 4:12-13

MINISTERING IN TEAMS

God's triune nature-and the nature of the Church as the body of Christ-demonstrate that we are to encourage gift-based ministry teams. We help one another discover his or her S.H.A.P.E. (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experience), and release each believer to serve God together with others. We want our ministry to be carried out by teams, characterized by team life as well as teamwork, since serving together is one of the important ways in which community is expressed. We seek to stimulate one another as we conduct the church's mission in a way that is biblically grounded and creatively expressed.

"The body is a unit, thought it is made up many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. . . . .Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it"
1 Corinthians 12:12, 27

THINKING AND ACTING LIKE MISSIONARIES

We need to be biblically faithful and culturally relevant in all that we do in a fast paced and quickly changing environment. Like missionaries, we must convey the unchangeable truth of the Gospel in a way that makes sense to people in their culture. We should keep asking: How can we more effectively communicate the Gospel in word and deed through the ministries of COS? How do we best reach people for Christ? How do we encourage believers to become spiritually mature?
"Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. . . . To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I may save some. I do all this for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its blessings"
1 Corinthians 9:19-20, 22-23

SERVING AND GIVING SACRIFICIALLY

We give generously the time, talents, and treasures that God has entrusted to us for the purpose of his kingdom.

 

Updated September 18, 2009