Our Goals

We feel as if the Lord is still revealing His heart to us as to what kind of church He wants us to be. We don’t actually believe that process will ever end. That being said, the following are both short and long-term goals that He has laid out for us and the community that we are creating.

Vision

Hope City Church is to be a center of revival that empowers people to live a life of continued renewal. 

Mission

To enthrone Jesus Christ, to equip leaders, to make disciples, to heal the broken, to preach the Gospel to our immediate community and beyond.

Values

Love. We love with abandon. Jesus is our first love and our sole desire. We love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. With Christ as our focus, we love our neighbors as ourselves. Our love supersedes race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and cultural differences. At Hope City, we desire to be a place of healing and open arms.

Pray. We believe that nothing moves in the earth unless the people of God pray that it would move. All of our programs are worthless if they are not founded and sustained in prayer. We will pray without ceasing until it becomes our lifestyle. We will pray more than we meet.

Equip. One of the primary functions of the Church is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. We want to help people find their purpose and equip them to fulfill it. We will produce apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, worship leaders, missionaries, etc. We don’t want to be a church that facilitates church-goers. We want to produce people who carry weight in the Kingdom.

Release. We desire to be a church that releases people into their function in the body of Christ, whether that be in our house or somewhere else. We want to be a church that sends the laborers out to other fields far beyond our own. This is the only Biblical model.

Our Values Expanded

At Hope City Church, we believe the mission of the Church is to be an agent of change in the lives of individual people and to project that change into the community around us. Therefore, the Church itself has a two-fold task—one that exists within its walls and one that exists without. We believe this is best communicated through an In and Out lifestyle that consistently renews, reorients, and releases people In the corporate church setting to go Out as salt and light to the community. Both of these areas are distinct in their practice and represent two parts of the Christian experience that make up the whole mission of the Church.

The In

When we come In to our corporate gatherings, we have only one desire: to lift Jesus Christ up as high as we can. Christ said in John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” We believe this to be true in the most fundamental ways. The only hope for the believer is Christ, high and lifted up. Likewise, the only hope of the unbeliever is Christ, high and lifted up. Therefore, our corporate gatherings will not revolve around the saved or unsaved but rather around the Christ we have gathered for. We will worship Him as God and invite Him to come take His place among us. We will lavish gifts upon Him and pour our hearts out before Him. Everything that we do in the corporate church setting will be set around the framework of experiencing the goodness of God. If done properly, this will draw the unbeliever to an awareness of their sinful state and give them space to choose to follow Christ or not. It will also draw the believer to greater fellowship and a greater awareness of their own continual need for Christ. We will worship, take communion, pray, prophesy from scripture, baptize, operate in the gifts, and heal the sick, all in proper order and in pursuit of Jesus. 

If Christ is our sole focus, we trust that He will create an atmosphere of revival in our corporate body. At Hope City Church, we define revival this way: Revival—a profound awareness of the goodness of God and an unquenchable desire to experience that goodness. Because a continued state of revival is our goal, we will not leave it to pursue other things. When it comes, we will learn to live in it and orient our lives and ministries around it. His goodness really is all we want and all we need. 

For Hope City Church, the weekly corporate gathering represents a community well of faith where our members can come to be refreshed and renewed in worship and fellowship with other believers. It is a weekly substation. Though some may come with little faith for the week, others will come with much faith. In this setting, focused on the throne of Jesus, we will lean on one another and build one another up. This community well of faith will be the catalyst for the salt and light that we will bring to our families, jobs, and communities throughout the week. The importance of the community well of faith will be one of our main emphases as a church. We must come In in order to effectively go Out. 

The Out

A people who have experienced Christ in a community well of faith, renewed their minds, reoriented their hearts, and set themselves to love Him fully will inevitably begin to love the world around them. They will go Out, full of the Holy Spirit and fire, preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, casting out devils, giving to the poor, and bringing the light of the Kingdom into the darkness of their secular communities. At Hope City Church, evangelism and the work of the Gospel is a basic expectation for those who are living in a state of revival. We want as many people as possible to experience the goodness that we have found in His presence. 

We are relentless in our task of spreading the Gospel to our community and beyond. We don’t want to just exist, forcing broken people to find us. We want to find broken people in our own families, workplaces, markets, and neighborhoods. We want to be active in our communities and give the best example of what it means to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” 

Every week, we will send empowered people back out into a broken world. We will come In, be renewed and refreshed, and go back Out to do the work of Christ. 

These two things together define our Church. If we never go In we will not properly go Out and our mission will be misguided. If we never go Out, one can hardly say that we’ve actually gone In. They go hand in hand.

Long-Term Goals for Hope City Church

The following are our long-term goals. Once established, we will move towards these things as the Lord directs us.

A Center of Prayer

We believe that everything the church is and does must begin and be sustained in prayer. We hope to operate prayer rooms, available for people to come and pray at any point during the day. We want to be a true prayer movement where we daily call out to God to move in our city.

A Diverse Body

We want Hope City Church to properly represent the diversity of both the Kingdom and our community. We want as many races and ethnic groups as possible represented in not only our church body but in our church leadership. We hope to be one of the catalysts for true racial reconciliation in our community.

A Forerunner in Prophetic Worship

We want a unique sound of worship to be developed at Hope City Church. Though we will use all the resources available across the Church, we want to add our voice to it through song-writing, training, and releasing worship leaders to operate in their gifts.

A Model Community Through Small Groups

Small groups will be an important part of Hope City Church. However, we want them to function as churches, not as social groups. Eventually, we want to have many groups meeting across our community, each with their own leaders. These groups will be tasked with reaching their immediate neighborhoods and connecting new converts to their small group and the greater church. We see these groups meeting weekly, most likely on Wednesday night. They will meet in homes, be led by pastors and worship leaders, and provide for a smaller community. This way, Hope City Church can equip and release many into the ministry and reach far beyond our immediate walls.

Caring for Our Community

We want to be voice of hope for the poor and broken. Hope City Church will be seen as a charitable organization and we will develop ways to address the needs of our community as the Lord leads us. We want to be a force for good and meet people where they are by meeting their needs.  

Active Evangelism

We believe a church is meant to confront a place and a people with the Gospel. We want to be very active in our evangelism. We want teams that go into our communities, pray for people, and spread the Gospel. If there is a community event, we want to be there. We want the city of Meridian to know that our church exists and our purpose is to see hope come to a city.

A Church That Plants Churches

In accordance with releasing people into their place in the body, we want to plant churches in other communities. We want to raise up church planting teams, equip them, and finance them to plant churches throughout Mississippi and wherever the Lord leads us.