The Vision of Grace Community Church

What is a Cowboy fan to do on a Sunday afternoon with no Cowboy game? How about write more on the blog?

The previous post outlined the reasons for starting the church in Austin, but now I would like to discuss the vision of Grace Community Church. We have refused to just identify a problem, but also have worked hard on a solution to the problem. We have worked hard and God has guided us to form a gameplan that we are confident about.

GCC is an evangelical church within the conservative Baptist tradition. In forming the vision we felt strongly about certain philosophies and doctrines. We saw the value of having more than one teaching pastor from the ministry of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. We also felt strongly about expository preaching from the influences of Tommy Nelson at Denton Bible Church as well as Dallas Theological Seminary. We also embraced the strong missions emphasis of the Southern Baptist Convention. Finally, we also had a vision for an authentic loving body like something we have only experienced in glimpses.

At the conclusion of our discussions and prayers we feel God led us to the mission statement of "Encouraging Others to Experience and Embrace the Grace of God". As time goes by I grow more and more in love with this statement. It completely grabs how we view the Christian spiritual life. This idea is so important to us that I will spend a separate post unpacking it.

There are five purposes of GCC. These are found through the Great Commission and the Great Commandment and are in line with the Purpose Driven Church movement. The five purposes of GCC are Worship, Service, Evangelism, Membership, Discipleship. These five purposes guide what we do. If something does not fit within one of these five purposes then we will not do it. We don't want to be great and something that God has not called us to do while being mediocre at the things that He calls His church to do.

All churches need to be doing those five purposes. If a church is not accomplishing those five things then they are unhealthy. Through our prayers and discussions we identified five values that will be unique to GCC, but will help determine how we carry out the five purposes. At GCC we will value the two "G's" (The Great Commandment and Great Commission), Relevance, Authenticity, Community, and Excellence. These values mean that we want to DO things according to these values. These values will help us evaluate the success of our ministries as a church.

This is just a brief window into our vision for Grace Community Church. To find out more visit our website at www.SouthAustinGrace.com.

Stylistically we will be a church the mainly preaches expository sermons, has contemporary worship that is simple yet excellent, we will embrace our Christian heritage of creeds and ordinances as well as classic worship, we will meet in home small groups, and we will have a team approach to the pulpit preaching.

This is just a brief teaser as to what we want to be about at GCC. God continues to move us forward, and your prayers are coveted. We need 300 people giving $50 a month to make this church happen. We are about 20% - 25% of the way there. If you have a passion for reaching the lost and investing into into eternal things we would like to invite you to be one of our partners. For more information check out our website.

In His Grace