There are many ways to declare.
There is some positive-killer-crossover (Basketballing reference for the rookie) with the Cultural Values as Standard-Bearers, yet, the following should still be viewed as representative.
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• RELOVUTIONARY aspires to perpetually right-size the Trinitarian God, and by so doing, right-sizing everything else, especially ourselves. This also points to the demand for true community as a fruit of a growing divine reflection, but also as a declaration of the Body of Christ’s real future.
• RELOVUTIONARY is birthed with a culture it means to continue, with a very specific goal: To be a church that plants churches. This must happen even, or especially, when it hurts. We seek to apply J. D. Greear’s words: “A church leader can have a large church with thousands of people attending, but if people are not going from it ‘outside the camp’ (Heb. 13:13), to pursue the mission and call of Christ, those leaders are delinquent in their duty.” [*]
• RELOVUTIONARY is emphatic about Disciple-making-and-living-more-like-Jesus-copycatting; in light of Acts 4:13, and into a post-Christian world without much of a real idea of His witness. This means to truly love God, Neighbour, and Enemy, as we seek the peaceful flourishing of the city, which will intersect with the poor of any world; in all its various shades, and be socially just, throughout.
• RELOVUTIONARY desires to prove the Church can still flourish in the post-Christian West. What does this practically mean? That lives are changed; that we would be a church that increasingly flourishes through conversion-growth, and not simply the transfer of other Christians, as much of a blessing as that will still be. But, throughout, because God decides how fruitful, we would remain content in Christ, and in light of the sovereign purposes of God.
• RELOVUTIONARY plans toward purposeful intention, into the God-glorifying flourishing ends of the me-in-we, because this is as God intends. We will endeavour to present everyone mature in Christ through a specific process (Colossians 1:28). This will involve living out more fruitfully the RELOVUTIONARY DNA, and loving out a more joyfully disciplined integration, because we celebrate the life as Jesus’s disciple.
• RELOVUTIONARY hopes to reverse the following decline, encapsulated in Terry Eagleton words, who affirms Nietzsche’s recognition that “contrary to its own best intentions” the middle class played a historic part in “bringing religion into disrepute” post the Enlightenment. In light of the goal to help reverse this predicament into our post-Christian Kiwi culture, one of our goals is to model a ministry, equip believers, so that friends and contacts will question the plausibility of their unbelief, throughout this broad group, and into popular culture.
• RELOVUTIONARY resolves to model an informed and reasoned Christianity, as the real legitimate avenue to more conclusively live out the type of practical Christianity, which is existentially satisfying and culturally compelling, especially in the post-Christian West. And to upend the dominant and stereotypical model of biblically-light, theologically-shallow Christianity, as the domain for only the intellectual or formal. As part of this intention, we seek to link arms with the historically orthodox faith of the past, and show how it is still the answer for all our futures.
• RELOVUTIONARY aims to increasingly positively speak into, and resource, the wider Body of Christ, especially in the post-Christian West, for their time and place, through an increasing array of media.
• RELOVUTIONARY prayerfully perspires for genuine revival. This is the future believe. We are desperate for redemptive rain, as the drought is real.
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Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. – Psalm 115:1-3
For the Fame of His Name
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[*] J. D. Greear, Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send, page 20 [Zondervan, July 28th, 2015].