Vision

Hey guys, I have a guy that I work with who sounded really interested in thinking about being part of our church. I thought it would be a good idea to develop a one-sheet synopsis of who we are and what we want to be about to give to people that are thinking about joining us. I am going to copy and paste it here. I wanted to get some of your feedback before I gave it to him, or to anyone else for that matter, because this is something that you have as much ownership as I do. So, let me know what you think, and if you have any thoughts on the covenant. I can email it to you if you would like also. If I haven't heard from you guys in a couple days, I will go ahead and give him what I have.

**Refuge Community Church** will be a church plant in the Denver metro area. We plan to start as a small home group in the beginning consisting of a committed group of 10 to 20 people who will make up the original “core” of the church. We will begin meeting as a “core” group in the Fall of 2009 and plan on our first “public” service being around Palm Sunday of 2010. This will hopefully allow for our basic group to share a vision and dream for the future of **Refuge Community Church** and to allow us to move forward in a unified way when our public services begin.

Why another church? We feel that the current churches are not doing an adequate job of reaching twenty-somethings or the large population of homeless and addicts in our world. We believe that these are groups that are often underrepresented because they do not necessarily tithe very well. However, we also desire to take Jesus seriously when he calls us to care for “the least of these.” We know that God has the strength and resources to take care of us financially. We will certainly not turn away people who are not in those particular groups, but we want to be a church that really seeks to help and reach out to those particular groups.

In addition, we feel that sometimes the best way to get away from problems of previous churches is to start fresh. We want to foster a certain amount of teamwork with other churches in the area, while also helping established ministries. We believe that we are all working to the same goal of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with the world.

We believe that the purpose of a church is to be a community of Christians who make up the “body of Christ” in a very real way. We want to do the work of God in our world. We want to be like family to one another and want to seek in a very natural way to incorporate more people into our group and hopefully expand our influence throughout the city, state, country and world. We believe it is our job to carry out the mission of God in the world. God wants all men and women to know that he loves them and that salvation is available to all.

What denomination will **Refuge** be? We have decided that due to a certain amount of baggage that goes with different denominations that we will be “non-denominational.” We do not want a name to get in the way of a person seeking the salvation of Jesus Christ.

How will **Refuge** be run? At the beginning the church will consist of a very small group of 10 to 20. During that time we will make all decisions based on discussion and vote. However, eventually we will adopt either an elder system or a staff led church. This will be decided during the Fall meetings of 2009.

Why all the crazy *** around **Refuge**? Because this is not our official name yet. We have adopted Refuge as our working name, and if it is ratified by vote early in our meetings, it will be our official name.

So there we go. Let me know if we can pray for you guys, I know it can be stressful thinking about the big move. We are excited to have you guys join us soon.

Random thoughts for today

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately. I really look forward to the day when you are all here and I can just post some stuff to think about leading up to our bible studies or whatever.

Anyway, I have been thinking about a lot of things lately, so I am going to throw in most of them out there and just see what you guys think.

First, I am working on drawing up some sort of covenant we can all agree on. Obviously I will send it to you all and you can look it over before, but I think it could be a good way to kind of agree on certain things as a team and a church. Some things I am thinking about including; something about helping the church financially when able, helping physically when able, attending, moderation in things like drinking and smoking cigars or pipes, the refusal to complain and gossip, agree to go to the other person in the church if there is a problem. What do you guys think about those things? The last thing I want is some list of legalistic things for us to stick to, but I also don't want us to pretend like freedom in Christ means we have no responsibility to each other.

Second, there are a lot of guys at the Rescue Mission who I think will really want to help us. Most of them have skills in manual labor, like drywall and painting and stuff like that. This is assuming we have a place to work on, but I know at some point we will hopefully have a building of some sort. I know these guys love to get out of the mission every now and then. They will be happy to help us and we can just give them a little lunch. For those of you who helped at Nexus, I know you will be excited and relieved by this. Some of those guys even have electrical and plumbing skills. There are also guys who are musicians there. One of them is staff, so he might be willing to help with music for awhile.

Third, it may seem like a long ways away, but you will be here before you know it. And we will be meeting as a small group before you know it. And we will have our first service before you know it. Don't put off getting ready to be here. Plan as best you can now, look for jobs online, it might not even hurt to apply for some. And most importantly, be praying that God will provide for us.

Fourth, it is amazing to me how many people Robin and I have met in our jobs that are excited about Refuge. I could guess 20-30 that might come and visit or check out our small groups if they were already started. That number will grow dramatically when you are all here and working. There is a huge group of people that want a church like the one we are preparing for. It will be some work, but I think it will be nothing but rewarding for each of you.

We are excited and anticipate all the great things you will all do when you get here. You are all awesome and I couldn't ask for a better group to do this with. Let me know what we can do to help you guys with the move, and post any prayer requests as usual.