God is Triune: Father, Son, & Spirit, and has joyfully existed as a community of love for eternity. God is love.
We were created in the image of God, who is inherently relational. As such, the quality of our lives is the quality of our relationships.
We rejected God through a relational rebellion born out of a false story regarding our ability to find life apart from him. Sin alienates us from God, ourselves, & others and leads to loneliness, guilt & shame.
Early formative experiences in a fallen world have shaped how we relate & how we image God.
As we’re (re)storied through counternarratives, we are discovering God is better than we believed him to be.
As dependent creatures designed for God, awareness of our need is a precondition of relational connection.
The Holy Spirit is our source of power, the indwelling teacher and guide for all of life. We create space to slow down and pay attention to the Spirit’s active presence in us, around us, and for us.
There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all learners.
We grow to experience the love of God in a safe, secure environment of grace, not judgment.
“The Present” is our only opportunity for connecting. We cannot relate in the past or the future, so we intentionally walk in the present at the pace of love. We find that hurry mutes the voice of God and blinds us to other images of God around us.
Noticing and naming our deepest desires and desperations in the presence of God and others guides us into what is true about us and God’s purposes through us.
Having connected deeply with God, ourselves, and others, we now carry this message to others in our neighborhoods and nations.
We believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus the Messiah, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the place of the dead, on the third day he rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty, and from that place will come to judge the living and the dead.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life eternal.
Amen.
Because we are loved by God, we are able to love God and ourselves for the sake of others.
“Keep yourselves in the love of God.”
The highest end of man and the greatest good in all reality is to know God and love him. We are only able to know and love him because he has first known and loved us. God’s first and only posture toward us is constantly to seek our greatest good as far as it can be obtained. Because God is love, we are “rooted and established in love,” grounding us in our identity as his beloved. This enables us to accept ourselves as we are, images of God and co-laborers with him in his ongoing creative activity. This also allows us to see others as they are, people created for relationship who deserve our attention and selfless service. Any lack of love for self or other is symptomatic of a deeper issue of not living in the love of God. Love begets love.
Because we are loved by God, we are a light, non-anxious presence in a dangerous world full of fear.
“In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”
As those loved by God, we ultimately have nothing to fear, even death itself, because Jesus has set us free from the fear of death. This settledness brings about a deep and lasting joy knowing who God is and in light of who he is, who we are. This allows us to experience an easy yoke and a light burden. We do not take ourselves too seriously, which allows us to bring balance and levity to situations that may otherwise cripple us or those around us. A deep anxiety or frantic worry reveals a deficit in our experience of the reality of who God is and the security we have found in him.
Because we are loved by God, we cultivate environments conducive to deep and meaningful relationships.
“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”
We have been created as embodied beings with an innate capacity for relationship. Because emotion is the language of relationship, we champion the courage required to examine our emotion and the honesty and vulnerability necessary to admit what is true about ourselves in the presence of God and others. As our emotional quotient grows, our capacity for relationship deepens and enables us to create spacious environments for others to experience deeper relationships themselves. The more we have of ourselves, the more we are able to give to others, and vice versa. This relational flourishing bears witness of the reality of the kingdom of God in a relationally fractured, isolated world. We reject any desire or attempt to live out of an artificial, false self, and work hard to maintain and grow authentic environments with meaningful relationships.
Because we are loved by God, we sit in unresolved tension with others, curious about how God is at work for our good in his time and his way.
“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Because we are settled in the joy that comes from experiencing an identity as God’s beloved with an integrous life, we are naturally able to sit with others in the unresolved tensions of their lives. We reject any attempt to fix others apart from the leading and empowerment of the Spirit. Rather, we patiently wait with others, continually pointing them to the presence and work of God in their lives. This allows us to be relationally present, instead of pushing an agenda on God and others to behave in ways we assume is right. We reject any attempt to coerce transformation or “hurry” someone along in their journey toward maturity, instead holding a posture of dependence on God in the lives of others.
Because we are loved by God, we increasingly demonstrate an inner life marked by his love.
“He shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.”
Because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts, we are being transformed in our inner beings from one glory to another. This sanctifying process results in an ever closing gap between what we say we believe and how we actually function in our motivations and actions. We do not merely look at external indicators of righteousness but always underneath to the desires that drive why we do what we do. This enables us to know ourselves deeply, which expands our capacity to grow in the knowledge, understanding, and experience of who God is. Inner authority naturally allows us to come alongside others and shepherd them along, many of whom live with disintegrated interior lives. We believe the greatest indicator of the true state of our inner lives is seen by our attitudes and actions revealed in the tension points of life.
Because we are loved by God, we utilize our experience, skills, and resources for the good of the world.
“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”
Driven by the love of God, we integrate all of the values above and bring our experience, training, skill, and resources in collaboration with the Church and other like-minded organizations to make a lasting difference in the world in the power of the Spirit for the kingdom of God. We believe (re)training people to connect deeply with God, themselves, and others will bring about transformation in the Church, the marketplace, the academy, and any other spheres the Spirit invites us into. We are about what our loving God is about, and that is the flourishing and wholeness of the whole world. This is God’s Eden Project.
Because we are loved by God, we cultivate environments conducive to deep and meaningful relationships.
“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”
We have been created as embodied beings with an innate capacity for relationship. Because emotion is the language of relationship, we champion the courage required to examine our emotion and the honesty and vulnerability necessary to admit what is true about ourselves in the presence of God and others. As our emotional quotient grows, our capacity for relationship deepens and enables us to create spacious environments for others to experience deeper relationships themselves. The more we have of ourselves, the more we are able to give to others, and vice versa. This relational flourishing bears witness of the reality of the kingdom of God in a relationally fractured, isolated world. We reject any desire or attempt to live out of an artificial, false self, and work hard to maintain and grow authentic environments with meaningful relationships.
Because we are loved by God, we sit in unresolved tension with others, curious about how God is at work for our good in his time and his way.
“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Because we are settled in the joy that comes from experiencing an identity as God’s beloved with an integrous life, we are naturally able to sit with others in the unresolved tensions of their lives. We reject any attempt to fix others apart from the leading and empowerment of the Spirit. Rather, we patiently wait with others, continually pointing them to the presence and work of God in their lives. This allows us to be relationally present, instead of pushing an agenda on God and others to behave in ways we assume is right. We reject any attempt to coerce transformation or “hurry” someone along in their journey toward maturity, instead holding a posture of dependence on God in the lives of others.
