The Watsonian (blog)

A lot of time is spent into prepar­ing and launch­ing a church.

Hours of think­ing, and rethink­ing and plan­ning and strate­giz­ing and ask­ing and beg­ging and believ­ing and trust­ing and pray­ing and more pray­ing and even more praying

And the ten­dency can be is to make more lists of what you are against…

What you hate about this church or that church…

And it cre­ates an atmos­phere of con­ceit, pride and arrogance

So in my talks with Tim about Gen­e­sis Church and our kid’s envi­ro­ment is list­ing what we are for and what we want to see happen

And believe me, it’s actu­ally harder to do it that way instead of say­ing what we are not

So over the next few weeks, my desire is to dive into our core val­ues and beliefs as a com­mu­nity of peo­ple rethink­ing life the way God intended and say what we are for…

OUR VALUES

Peo­ple

Peo­ple are God’s trea­sure. In fact he told them so in Exo­dus 19:5 “…you will be my trea­sured pos­ses­sion”. God‘s orig­i­nal design was for peo­ple to be together. All peo­ple. The Bible says in Eccle­si­astes 4 ”Again I saw some­thing mean­ing­less under the sun: There was a man all alone.” This is why we value build­ing authen­tic rela­tion­ships with peo­ple. Jesus’ min­istry & life were solely about help­ing, lov­ing and reach­ing peo­ple. No one was ever excluded and every­one was invited to join. In fol­low­ing the way of Jesus we wel­come, accept, invite, live with and among every­one, no mat­ter their back­ground, race, polit­i­cal party, shape, size, dress or any other idea that might put a divid­ing wall between two peo­ple.  God’s design hap­pens best when this way of liv­ing takes place.

//Genesis 2:18 / Exo­dus 19:1–5 / Eccle­si­astes 4:7–12 / Mark 12:29 / 1 John 4:7–21

Fam­ily

Fam­ily is impor­tant. Although each fam­ily looks very dif­fer­ent from the next, we believe that fam­ily should be of the high­est pri­or­ity. Out­side of our rela­tion­ship with God, our rela­tion­ship with fam­ily is cru­cial. The role of a hus­band to his wife, a wife to her hus­band, par­ents to chil­dren, and chil­dren to par­ents are painted all through the Bible. We believe that we are to help oth­ers under­stand that a fam­ily learn­ing, giv­ing, and being together has a huge advan­tage in dis­cov­er­ing the life God designed for each of its members.

//Deuteronomy 6:4–5 / Proverbs 13 / Eph­esians 5:21–33

Scrip­ture

We believe that the Scrip­tures are God’s very words given to us. They are inspired by God and recorded by men. God’s word is not just a check box each day on our list of things to do as a Chris­t­ian. We believe these poems, let­ters, accounts and sto­ries are essen­tial for daily liv­ing. Our respon­si­bil­ity is to learn how to live these words to the world we are placed in. We value read­ing, learn­ing, and mem­o­riz­ing these words so that we have them on our hearts and minds as we enter in and out of rela­tion­ships with people.

//Deuteronomy 6:4–9 / Joshua 1:7–8 / Psalm 18:30 / Philip­pi­ans 4:8–9 / 2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17

Prayer

We believe prayer is not bound to time or sched­ule. Prayer is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with God in every moment of the day. Prayer is pow­er­ful and was estab­lished for com­mu­nity, heal­ing, and restora­tion among each other and with God. We believe God longs to walk and talk with us. We also acknowl­edge the honor we have to speak with Him, but must also have the dis­ci­pline to be silent to hear Him. We believe that God is always lis­ten­ing to the cries of His peo­ple and draws close to us when we draw close to Him. With­out prayer, we are inca­pable of truly liv­ing in a rela­tion­ship with God.

// Matthew 6:5–18 / Eph­esians 6:18 / James 5:13–15

Rest & Simplicity

We believe that God designed the world to work in a cer­tain rhythm. Most peo­ple enter in and out of their week, fran­ti­cally wear­ing them­selves out from try­ing to do too much. In doing so they never under­stand that they are try­ing to con­trol and dic­tate the out­come of life for them­selves. We believe God is in con­trol. We do believe that we are to work hard and that rest does not equal lazi­ness. Still our value is to teach peo­ple to step back, rethink their cal­en­dar and sched­ule times of rest. When we do this we are dis­play­ing to God that we trust him with all of our life.

We also believe that sim­ple is bet­ter. The world is already full of com­plex choices and deci­sions to make. The Bible although dif­fi­cult at times to under­stand, is an instruc­tion to live life dif­fer­ent from the pat­terns of the world. Through a sim­ple approach, we believe the best life pos­si­ble can be found.

//Exodus 31:12–16 / Deuteron­omy 8 / Matthew 6:25 – 33 / Matthew 11:28

Togeth­er­ness

We believe that we are to play an active role in the world God cre­ated. Together as a body we are to set the exam­ple of how to stew­ard our time, resources, and abil­i­ties in this world. We are the embod­i­ment of His mes­sage to those on the other side of the planet and to those next door to us.  We believe that God has a plan to reclaim and restore His cre­ation; and what we do while we are liv­ing mat­ters. Our call is to work together as a team to repro­duce peo­ple who under­stand this way of liv­ing. Through strate­gic work, we will see this hap­pen through net­work­ing with other churches, out­reach, serv­ing our com­mu­nity, church plant­ing, and any other crazy idea that just might work to teach peo­ple: that they are the church in the world wher­ever they go.

//Genesis 1:28–29 / Psalm 24:1–2 / Matthew 28:18–19 / John 3:16 / Acts 1:9 / Romans 8

Prepa­ra­tion, Cre­ativ­ity & Excellence

Our pas­sion is to engage peo­ple with the mes­sage of Jesus from the best we have to offer. We believe that we were designed to be cre­ative and that the best ideas, thoughts and dreams should come by those who see life through dif­fer­ent lenses. God has given each of us a small plat­form to use our gifts and skills in a unique way. We set high stan­dards and make our stan­dards explicit so that we can eval­u­ate our progress in this area as a team. We believe that every expres­sion of the Church must be done with authen­tic­ity, integrity, and excel­lence. Because we believe this, we find it impor­tant that we bring our hearts and souls when we come together. We hold the right to defer or decline any­thing that is not the best we can pos­si­bly do or within our pur­pose. Still, this value is only pos­si­ble when time and prepa­ra­tion are tak­ing place.

// Colos­sians 3:17

Play & Recreation

Each of us have unique hob­bies and inter­ests that allow us to enjoy the world around us.  It is vital that we enjoy these moments to find bal­ance to life for our own health. We will rec­og­nize the sea­sons of busi­ness and plan breaks accord­ingly.  We find extreme value in vaca­tions and sab­bat­i­cals to find fun and rest in the life God cre­ated for us.