OUR MINISTRY FOCUS

We see ourselves as a purpose-driven church.
Our Vision Statement describes our self-understanding and our purpose. "Christ, through Grace, is restoring lives and transforming seekers to servants." This statement represents a process that should be taking place in every dimension of our ministry.

We see ourselves as a church living on the edge of a new mission frontier.
Jesus told his disciples, "You shall be my witnesses from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)." We take seriously that missional call and direction, yet we have an understanding of a mission frontier that has changed much from the one that has been common to the church in America for many years. America, as is much of the world, is living in a "Post -Christian era." Christianity is no longer the generally accepted worldview out of which the majority of the population operates.

 Because of technology, we live in an age of a shrinking world. Everything is getting closer and more immediate. Through the use of technology, I can contact people around the world and share documents or full-motion video with them as if they were standing right beside me. People of different cultures and worldviews live next door. The values and images that were generally part of the worldview of the modern Christian era are no longer generally accepted or widely shared. Loren B. Mead suggests that whereas the mission frontier used to be in other countries and in developing worlds, now the mission frontier is right on our doorstep. In order to communicate effectively with the people in our immediate cultural context, it is necessary to develop a clear sense of healthy differentiation. We are to be in and not of the world, along with an open and sharing approach towards others in a way that allows them to hear in their own way of understanding. We find ourselves in a situation similar to the apostle Paul’s when he said:

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.  1 Cor. 9:19-23

With this understanding, we try to understand the language and orientation of the surrounding world so that we can communicate Christ in the most effective way.

We see ourselves as a congregation designed for a new day with intentional outreach to (but not limited to) younger emerging generations.
At Grace Community, in an attempt to reach out to "Boomers", "Generation X" and "Millennials", we have tried to provide a worship atmosphere that is more attractive to these age groups. The music of Promise, the worship band at Grace, is one of the most important dimensions of our worship service. Our music is a mixture of contemporary Christian songs, praise and worship choruses, traditional hymns, and good secular music that can serve as a "bridge-point" to draw people from the world towards the Kingdom. We focus on sharing music that will invite the listener to enter into an experience of the presence of our loving, caring God. Music, drama, video clips from movies or TV, stories, and an informal preaching style are used to communicate effectively with the modern orientation and draw people into a church that helps them grow into a full relationship with God. It is so exciting to see the way that God is reaching out to a new generation in a new way, and it is a privilege to be a part of God's work.

We see ourselves as a believer-oriented, seeker-sensitive church.

We realize that, in order to reach the people who may be seeking God but don't attend church, the church must use communication styles in both music and preaching that connect with these "seekers," people who are looking for meaning in life and who don’t know God. That is precisely what John and Charles Wesley did to reach the unchurched of their day. Many of the hymns penned by the Wesleys were tunes drawn from pubs or workplaces and given new lyrics. They borrowed this idea from Jesus who used the most common form of communication in His day – storytelling - and his stories were not necessarily religious. To farmers, he talked about scattering seed. To people in business, he talked about investing... yet with each of his stories, or parables, he was able to help the "seekers" of His day understand spiritual truth. This is what we are trying to do at Grace Community.

While we are sensitive to the needs of and communication styles that effectively reach "seekers," we do not orient our style of service completely towards non-participatory presentation. We have a service that is both worshipful and participatory because we believe that "seekers" are drawn not only by the presentation of a message, but also by an encounter with authentic expressions of believer worship.

We see ourselves as a disciple-making church.
Our ultimate goal is to help every person move from simply seeking God to following God completely. We have developed a process of discipleship formation and tracking. This process reflects our vision statement and will be spelled out in a later section of the paper. 

We see ourselves as an outreach-oriented church.
Jesus commands us to go - outside the comfort of our own church, beyond the boundaries of our routine and experience, to reach out to others in a compassionate and concerned way. That is what the "Great Commission" from Jesus in Matthew 28 is all about, and that is what we are trying to accomplish in all of our areas of ministry. We want to reach out with the ever broadening perspective of the Acts 1:8 "to the ends of the earth" attitude.

The church has shown a great deal of interest in the area of outreach and mission. From the genesis of the first newspaper article to the current multi-dimensional missions program, the people of Grace understand that a very important part of being a child of God and a disciple of Christ is outreach and servanthood.

The purpose-driven and indigenous approach to ministry has been the driving force behind the growth of our missions programs. We have never taken specific projects and tried to make them projects of the church. Our missions program has developed from the intersection between our people’s particular areas of resource and giftedness and the needs of people that are encountered. This creates a great deal of ownership of the projects that arise as well as a great deal of satisfaction when they are completed. The combination of these two areas of effectiveness create a contagious feeling in the church that makes others want to get involved as well.

We see ourselves as a large and growing church.
Self-image and self-understanding are very important in the life of a congregation if it is going to position itself to develop staff, programs, facilities, and ministries to allow it to be "ends of the earth" oriented. It is important that we continue to remember this attitude, because it is easy to become self-centered, inward-focused, and forget that we are called to be in ministry to ever expanding circles of outreach and never to exist solely for ourselves. This orientation requires that we constantly reexamine our structure, our staff, our leadership styles, and the programs we create. There also must be constant evaluation of the programs in which we engage to make sure that our purpose is being served rather than just our pleasure.

Seeing ourselves as a large and growing church affects both our administrative structure and leadership style. If we see ourselves as a large church, then we understand the nature of the church as a complex organism that needs to be directed and managed like a large institution rather than a little country congregation. The roles of the clergy, staff, and lay leadership have to take on dramatically different functions. If we remember that we are a large and growing church, then we expect growth and the changes that come with the growth.

We see ourselves as a balanced church.
The Wesleyan Quadralateral serves as a guide for keeping things balanced in our theological approach and in the direction of our ministry. We try to derive our source of direction and our model for action through an encounter with the scriptures, our tradition (not just the forms of tradition, but the original principles which formed the tradition), our reason, and our experience. What we teach and what we do should be rooted in scripture, grounded in tradition, make sense to the educated mind, and have a basis in experience. We want to maintain balance because we have seen the problems of excess in different, unbalanced approaches. If any one of the four above listed elements is emphasized without the inclusion of the others, major difficulties can arise. In my own conversations and experience with "seekers,"

I have found that many people react to churches that are too rooted in traditional practices and forms and that emphasize the rational dimension of religion to the exclusion of the ontological and existential. Others react to the churches that use the Bible as the authoritative word of God without applying any sense of rational interpretation and understanding of historical or contextual relevance. Many churches have gone the way of focusing on the feelings and the mysterious "manifestations of the Spirit," making one particular type of religious experience, such as speaking in tongues, the normative experience, and the litmus test for true Christianity. We see ourselves as trying to walk the fine line of balance as a faithful Christian congregation in the Wesleyan tradition the middle of a pluralistic and constantly changing society.

In the Atlantic Monthly, (Aug. 96) the cover article entitled "The Next Church" reports on churches which model new principles for reaching an increasingly unchurched culture; Grace Community is such a church. Since June of 1992, the new worshipping congregation has grown from 0 to over 1000 in average attendance by operating according to many of these same principles.

 

 Over the past several years, we have sent staff, the worship band, and other groups from the church to assist other churches in revitalization and the utilization of new methods. We have also opened our music practices and enrichment seminars to people from other churches in order to give them an inside look at what is involved with making this type of worship possible. We anticipate developing this area of our ministry in significant ways as we move into the future.

We teach through ministerial calling and development. In general, there appears to be a coming crisis in ministerial leadership in the Louisiana Annual Conference. There are a decreasing number of people who are entering into the ministry, while at the same time the majority of the ministerial members of the Conference are approaching retirement age rapidly. In contrast to this pattern, we have been fortunate to see a comparably large number of youth and young adults in this congregation express a desire to enter into the ordained ministry or the mission field. We currently have more than ten people in either the Inquiry or the Candidacy process for ordination and a couple who became missionaries in Mexico.