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.

This morning was our 100th service at OneLife Church, and we announced major changes as we move forward.

First, we are changing what we care about most. Our top priority has always been to make disciples who reproduce disciples and to be a church that reproduces churches. But to be honest, we haven’t always functioned that way. “Putting out the fire closest to the tent” has often distracted us.

No more!

One move we are making to help with this is a change in facilities. Starting October 2 OneLife will begin meeting at Jubilee Banquet Facility. This is a HUGE change for us, but an exciting one as this new facility will allow us opportunities to reach more people in quite a few ways.

• Incredible children’s ministry space. We will be able to minister to families in a much better way.
• Great location still in our target area of Powell. Only 1 mile off I-75 Callahan Exit and less than 1/2 mile from Clinton Hwy.
• 300-seat auditorium will create energetic atmosphere and opportunity to pack out two services.
• Internet access will allow us to stream our services live online each week for people who want to check out church but won’t yet visit.
• Church offices have moved to the Jubilee property giving us a permanent presence on site.
• New office includes a large meeting room able to accomodate as many as 70 people that will be used throughout the week for student ministry, partnership classes, band rehearsal, small group meetings, and more.

This move is also a step toward one day acquiring our own facility that will provide us a home base to plant churches and campuses all over East Tennessee by freeing up human and financial resources. It’s a big dream and a big vision but as we sang this morning, “If our God is for us then who could ever stop us? And if our God is with us, then what can stand against?!”

This is our chance to re-launch our church and reach tons of new people for Jesus. If a launch team of 12 people in my living room turned into 400 people at OneLife this morning, what can 400 people turn into as we make this move? The sky is the limit and we’ve only just begun!!!

On September 13, 2009 OneLife Church was born. It was a huge day. But this Sunday – August 21 – will be our biggest day ever.

100 services later we are celebrating all that God has done in the early days of our church with one combined, HUGE service at 10 a.m. But that’s not all. We’ll be making an announcement that changes OneLife more than anything in our history.

If you call OneLife Church your home, think one day you might, or just want to hear what’s next for our church, do NOT miss this big day!

It’s also the perfect day to invite someone to come with you. Use the facebook event to RSVP and send an invitation, or use the website and video below to spread the word.

See you Sunday!