One of the most imporant thoughts you will wrestle with when starting a church is why you exist.  It should be as simple and reproducible as possible.  Everyone person should understand what you do, what you ask of them, and what they can exspect from you.

Our goal at Graceland is to be “disciples, making disciples to change our world.”  Very simple, “be – make – go,” and we like it that way.  Although, we are still working with the grammer and sentence structure we are keeping with the base thought.

Over the next three post I breakdown these three actions that make up our foundation of who we are.

We are responsible to be disciples:

To be a disciple of Christ means to live in the “if” of his calling.  As people followed Jesus he began to use the language of “you’re my disciple if…”  And He redefined commitment. “You’re my disciple if you love one another.”  “You’re my disciple if you bear fruit.”  “You’re my disciple if you take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow me.”  Jesus came proclaiming truth, teaching truth, and being truth.  A disciple of Christ is one who believes his truth, rest on his sacrifice, absorbs his presence, and imitates his example. As disciples we strive to proclaim, teach, and live out His truth in authentic relationships with others.  Jesus explained that disciples are supposed to be salt and light in culture.  We are not to cluster in our buildings, defending ourselves from evil.  Instead we are to use our minds to embrace the truth and dialogue with those searching for it.  To do this we strive to have a knowledge and appreciation of the culture’s movies, books, music, etc., in order to understand the culture’s hopes, dreams, stories, and fears.  So, we can show people that only Jesus can fulfill their greatest desires.  We believe discipleship is a journey and the best possible way to live.

I would love some of your thoughts and feedback.