A year and a half ago, our staff developed what we called “The Gauge” – a list of the values that drive our church and help us gauge whether or not we are staying on track with what God called us to do. To be completely honest, the catalyst for this was a similar list from Elevation Church that they were teaching to each of their volunteers. Hearing how they were doing that helped us realize that we weren’t doing a good job teaching the DNA of our church to the many new people who were getting involved.

So we began to look closely at our church and ask, “At the core of who we are as a church, what are the non-negotiables we want people to know?” From that question came 11 answers. And they were good answers. But now that we are a year and half older, have doubled in size since then, and have become even more laser focused than ever, it became clear that it was time for those 11 to be looked at very closely.

With that in mind, we asked the question last week, “Which of these values are our ‘crystal balls’? In other words, which of these are so important to us and who God has called us to be that if we dropped the ball on them, they would shatter?” What happened as a result was incredible. We realized that God has been molding us and working us to become a unique church that doesn’t simply imitate what everyone else is doing, but begins to innovate what HE wants us to be doing. And there are four key elements, or core values, that have emerged as our “crystal balls” that we are going to guard with our lives! Those are:

1. We are sold out to God’s vision for OneLife.
2. We are on a mission to reproduce.
3. We keep it real.
4. We are laser focused and fiercely intentional.

What we discovered was many of our original 11 were the result of one of these four. So over the next couple of days I’ll unpack how this simplification will help us continue charging forward and aggressively reaching our city for Jesus.