Yesterday I wrote about the first two core values that drive everything at OneLife. Today we look at the last two.

3. We Keep it Real.
Too many lives are ruined by people who never get real. Life is too painful and eternity is too serious for us to allow this in the church. For this reason, we will do everything in our power to prevent people from falling through the cracks by “playing church.” We’ll do this by:

• Understanding our culture. We’ll teach for life-change, have worship that is relevant, and environments that are contagious rather than judgmental.
• Dealing with sin. An aspect of church leadership that isn’t so fun is church discipline. The Bible is very clear that one of the main functions of the church is to hold believers accountable.
• Growing smaller as we grow larger. Truly caring for each other happens when we engage in life together in small groups; either in volunteer teams or home groups.

4. We are laser focused and fiercely intentional.
Simplicity is our mojo. This allows us to do fewer things very well, increasing our ability to connect with those who are far from God. We focus on doing a few things really well – those things that we believe can make the most impact. With this focus we can:

• Give our best to God in everything that we do.
• Adjust quickly, making changes that need to be made as we reach more and more people for Jesus.
• Care for our partners, allowing for rest rather than stress!

These four values are what filters everything we do. Nothing more and nothing less!

Yesterday I wrote about the simplification of our core values, what we call “The Gauge” at OneLife. Today I want to start unpacking those four, and talk about why they are so important to us.

1. We are sold out to God’s vision for OneLife.

This isn’t my church, and it isn’t my vision. God wants to do something so great that only HE can get the credit for it! But we will only allow God to do that when each and every one of us are completely and totally sold out to His vision for us! When that happens, we will:

• Aggressively defend our leadership and our unity. We trust those in spiritual authority while infighting has no place here.
• Sacrifice freely. A portion of our time will be given through volunteering and a portion of our resources will be given through tithes and offerings; both to help reach more and more people for Jesus!

2. We are on a mission to reproduce.

Jesus gave us a simple mission: reproduce! Just like all healthy organisms reproduce, healthy Christians reproduce baby Christians and healthy churches reproduce baby churches. If you are sold out to the vision, you will live every day of your life on mission to reproduce! As a church, we will do that through campus churches and planting churches. We must never stop growing and multiplying because:

• God loves people. “The Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
• God commands us to reach out. “Go out into the country lanes and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.” Luke 14:23
• Growth is God’s will. “Under Christ’s control the whole body is nourished and grows as God wants it to grow.” Colossians 2:19

Before we move on to numbers three and four tomorrow, you have homework! If you are a OneLifer, take some time to consider this: Are you sold out to God’s vision here? If not, please let us help you find a local church where your answer to that question will be a huge YES! And secondly, do you live everyday on a mission to reproduce and multiply? If not, you are missing out on the key command that Jesus gave. Take some time pray for boldness in sharing your story with someone, and then go share it!

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.

I’ve always been the kind of person that got irritated by overt trendiness. You know, when someone only does, says, or wears something because they saw all the cool kids doing, saying, or wearing it. In my mind I just want to scream, “Just be YOU! If a v-neck t-shirt with a scarf and toboggan in the heat of summer is you, great! I’ll think you’re weird, but who cares! But if it’s just because you saw Justin Bieber or some other trend-setter-in-your-eyes doing it, you aren’t fooling anyone but yourself!”

Now, I’m not dumb enough to think this makes me better than those wannabe trendy people; in fact, it really reveals a lot of pride in me when I don’t keep it in check…as if I never get sucked into a trend myself. But at the same time, this desire for people to be real and authentic can also be something God uses to help me lead and keep our church on the track of becoming the unique church he wants us to be.

So this week I taught our staff the difference between innovating and imitating. How do we know if something we’re doing is an innovation or an imitation? We become students of our church and our culture, and we ask the question, “Am I doing this because it fits our church and our culture, or someone else’s church and someone else’s culture?”

There are a lot of awesome churches in big cities around the south. But Atlanta isn’t Knoxville. Charlotte isn’t Knoxville. Trying to imitate those churches may look and sound good, but ultimately they won’t connect with our East Tennessee culture and our East Tennessee church if we aren’t innovative first. Similarly, there are some incredible pastors and leaders around the country that I can learn from. But they are students of their culture and their church. Trying to be just like them from the clothes I wear and the things I say to the way I preach and the things I value will only make me an impostor, not an innovator.

As we talked about this, we were honest and identified some areas that we imitated instead of innovated. But we also saw many ways that we were innovators first, and then turned to other churches and leaders to learn how they were already doing what God was leading us to do in our church and our culture.

Our goal going forward is to innovate first, and then learn from what others do instead of imitating them. One thing that came out of that – and something God was already working in me – was a major consolidation and simplification of our core values in what we call, “The Gauge.” Next week I’ll share with you the only four things that remain from that original list. The four things that really drive OneLife to be innovators instead of imitators.

In part one of this discussion, I shared my personal journey of coming to understand that praying is a lot different than demanding. Praying allows God to say “no.” Demanding expects God to do whatever I ask of Him…period.

The problem with that is there are dozens of examples in scripture of God saying “no.” But why would God say “no” if I ask him to do something or give me something I need? There are two reasons exposed in scripture.

The first is sin. Oftentimes sin will get in the way of us truly understanding what God’s desire is for us, making it impossible to even know how to pray! On top of that, sin – if left unrepentant – separates us from God’s blessing and favor. We see that in several examples like when King Saul prayed for help and guidance, but had previously removed so far from God and was so engrossed in unrepentant sin that He no longer answered Saul’s prayers (1 Samuel 28:6-7).

The second reason God often says “no” is when it is not His will and because it is not the best thing or the best way. The most obvious example of that is when Jesus prayed for the “cup of suffering” to pass by him. But – being our perfect example – Jesus also prayed for his Father’s will to be done and left room for Him to say “no.” Obviously, God did indeed say “no” to Jesus’ prayer that he not face suffering on the cross (Matthew 26:36-46).

This really shouldn’t surprise us. God is the perfect Father. I’m by no means a perfect father, but I find myself telling my 1-year old daughter “no” about 100 times a day! “No, don’t chew on the computer charger.” “No, you can’t have another Hersey Kiss.” “No, you can’t have sweet tea instead of milk.” “No, you can’t climb the fireplace.” Does telling her “no” make me a mean father? Of course not! It makes me a loving father who knows what is best for her.

As you evaluate your prayer life, first ask yourself if you are leaving God room to be your perfect Father and say “no.” If not, begin to pray like Jesus, asking for God’s will to be done – not your will to be done! Then if you feel God is saying “no” to something you ask, remember that He is the perfect Father looking out for what is best for you…even when it doesn’t look like it on this side of eternity!