IN AND OUT LIFESTYLE

Our Vision and 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 mission, one that exists within its walls and one that exists without. It is 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 will have only one real 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 will 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 will represent a community well of faith where our members can come to be refreshed and renewed in worship and fellowship with other believers. It will be 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 emphasis 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 will be a basic expectation for those who are living in a state of revival. We will want as many people as possible to experience the goodness that we have found in His presence.

Hope City Church will be relentless in our task of spreading the Gospel to our community and beyond. We don’t want to just exist in a way that broken people have to find us. We want to find broken people in our own families, workplaces, markets, and neighborhoods. We want to be the most 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 will 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.