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Podcast 4 - Mission and Values
36 Plays5 days ago
Join us as we dive into the mission and values that drive our culture here at Grove Hill Church
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Transcript
Introduction to Grove Hill Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome back to the Grove Hill podcast. Down to just me and John today. Kyle's still in Guatemala. We'll be coming back home today. Looking forward to having him back with us next week. But we thought we'd take on a different subject today. As we've been planning and talking about this podcast, we we thought about keeping a variety of subjects before us. Everything from sermon topics to ah Christian disciplines,
00:00:35
Speaker
maybe ah cultural events, current events, things of that nature.
Choosing a Church: Key Factors
00:00:39
Speaker
Today we decided to take a little bit of ah behind the scenes look at who Grove Hill Church is and why we choose to operate the way we do in the world we do today.
00:00:48
Speaker
um John, you weren't part of the original launch of this church. Right, right. When you came me in what what were you looking for as a person who's, you know, hey, i'm I'm trying to find the right church for me and my family, those kinds of things. What what kind of things were you looking for?
00:01:03
Speaker
I think some of the first things that my wife and I were looking for in a church, we obviously had a ah little girl, 10 months old at the time. So we were wanting to see the the possibility of, man, to have a place where our kids can go in where they can be taught the Word of God.
00:01:20
Speaker
But even beyond that, I believe from the top down, and I say the top down is not just from the pastor, but do they have a place where we can be discipled? Not just on Sunday morning. Do they have, whether it's small groups or Sunday schools, or do they have something where we can really kind of dig into, sink our teeth into?
00:01:40
Speaker
And then... Thirdly, do they have strong church leadership? Do they have people that are going to stand up whenever things get tough? yeah And I think over the first few months, I kind of found that out. And i would say those are some key factors of what I looked into was back to it. Kids ministry, a strong emphasis on discipleship and strong leaders to push that discipleship element.
Gathering vs. Scattering: Church Purpose
00:02:10
Speaker
the primary focus of the church in fact yeah before we started the podcast we were talking about this idea of being gathered versus being scattered as' a and And truly 21st century church that's doing what the first century church set out to do has to be a little bit of both.
00:02:25
Speaker
So explain those two concepts, gathering and scattering. Yeah, so the the gathering and the scattering, obviously the church God has gathered. We mentioned that in Acts. We've mentioned it at Grove Hill over the last year. i know you just finished that up before we walked into the chronological series.
00:02:41
Speaker
But as we go from the gathered to the scattered, the church is getting together and equipping themselves. Sometimes the communal element is there, but even more so than that, it's living on mission and saying, all right, what are we gearing up for?
00:02:55
Speaker
And what are we equipping ourselves to go out and do? And that's just armor up with the gospel and and that happening in a multitude of ways, just like we mentioned a while ago. Do you find these elements to equip yourself for what you're going to do Monday through Saturday?
Creating a Mission Statement
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:10
Speaker
So here at Grove Hill, the way we go about that gathering and scattering starts with mission statement, vision statement, values. Most churches do this. um I'm just going to be completely transparent and say in seminary, I hated these concepts.
00:03:23
Speaker
And here's why. Because every leadership class I took in seminary and even before I got to seminary, talked about the idea of mission and vision. And I understand that. But when it came to mission, i think after like the 17th time of being asked, what's the mission for your church or you know the church you want to have in the future?
00:03:40
Speaker
I finally asked my professor, isn't the mission of every 21st century church supposed to be the same if we're truly Christian? though It's to make much of Jesus. I mean, that's that's really it. That's the concept. But then they push you, and if you really want to get your grade, you have to go with something catchy. So we came up here with this idea. It's been repeated numerous times using different words all over the country to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
To impact the whole life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. So let's talk about that a little bit. When we talk about the word impact, what comes to your
Gospel's Transformative Impact
00:04:13
Speaker
head? Yeah. and I know it's not the best analogy, but I think of, um, you're not getting away from it. You're not dodging around it. It's going to intersect your life at some good point or another. And and the impact may happen in a multitude of ways, yeah but some way we're going to impact, uh, if you get to Grove Hill church, you're going to be impacted, uh, whether it's your kids or you, uh, whoever it is, they're going to get the gospel somehow. Yeah. So,
00:04:41
Speaker
I think for me, when i was putting this together, because I was the founding member of this, founding member, founding pastor of this church, the word impact for me kind of was that idea, that image of when you get hit in the gut and your breath gets taken away. yeah I love that picture of that's what the gospel does to us. It takes our breath away.
00:04:59
Speaker
It leaves us, in a sense, breathless before God when we realize the value of what God has done for us through his son, Jesus Christ, and bringing us to salvation. Yeah. So we talk about the life of every person. That's a pretty much an obvious one. We believe nobody is beyond the grace of Jesus Christ, that no matter what your past looks like, no matter where you've been or what guilt or shame you bring to the church, the church is built to handle that because we're built around the grace of Jesus Christ, which says that any man who comes and confesses his sin can be forgiven.
Understanding the Whole Gospel
00:05:30
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about the whole gospel. Why that phrase, the whole gospel? Yeah. I believe it has to be the whole gospel. You may hear this in a couple different references, ah but we believe in the entirety of Scripture, all 66 books.
00:05:45
Speaker
We believe in the Old Testament the New Testament. We believe that they feed off of one another. Although there are two separate, you know, the covenants ah we see are different in there.
00:05:57
Speaker
There's such an element of All of this being brought together in the revelation of who God is, who his son is, who his spirit is to be, and how he desires us as believers to observe life through it. yeah And so the the whole gospel is meaning we're not just love.
00:06:18
Speaker
we We believe God is love, yes but God is a God of justice. God is a holy God. So all those elements from the Old Testament, New Testament, or the characteristics of God, we have to preach it all.
00:06:31
Speaker
And so I think both of those examples, you have to bring it all from Genesis to Revelation. You remember that old game you used to play as a kid where they had the little like the little plastic tower and it had little holes in it you could stick the sticks through and the marble sat on top of it and you had to take turns? I don't know. Okay.
00:06:48
Speaker
It was a old game. There used to be an old game, I promise you, it's out there. don't remember what the name of it was. But there was a cylinder. I might have to see And there were like little sticks, like the pickup sticks you used play as a game. But you would stick them through and then you would pour the marbles on top. course they would sit on top of the sticks.
00:07:04
Speaker
You had to take turns pulling each one of those out. And each time we'd pull them out, you would lose for the number of marbles that you allowed to drop through. The idea was to you know be one of the fewest marbles at the end.
00:07:15
Speaker
Um, and that, that's what I kind of think about when I think about the whole gospel, because anytime you take any part, any portion, any little participle of the gospel and remove it, you're creating a false gospel.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah. You can't have God of love without a God of justice. You can't have God's mercy without understanding that we need mercy and we have to have forgiveness and that we are sinful people. and And to me, many of the churches that are doing this attractional kind of gospel where they soften certain parts or remove certain parts, they're doing nobody any favors. They're leaving out the message of what the gospel is really all about. yeah And so um sometimes it's hard to hear what the gospel has to say about us, but we have to hear it in order to be saved. Yeah.
Mission Statement: Broad Scope
00:07:59
Speaker
And then the the last part, I always laugh at the last part because when I first introduced this to my wife, she said, do you seriously mean any means possible? Like, are you going to hold a gun to somebody's head or whatever? And I'm like, and well, no.
00:08:12
Speaker
But what I mean is we're going to go wherever we... We're commanded to go. We're going to do whatever it takes to put that gospel out there. We're not going to compromise. We've already covered that by saying we're going to do the whole gospel. But short of compromising the gospel and breaking the law, yeah we're going to do whatever we can to put the gospel out there for people, to reach people and let them be presented to it. And to me, that's one of the favorite things that we do as a church. Yeah, and I think that that goes hand in hand with the way that we have...
00:08:39
Speaker
lived it out and i think it's wonderful whenever people in the community of chapel hill are able to see if they do come to look at this and they're saying oh wow they've lived this out they have really matched up their actions with their words when they look at a mission or a vision statement and uh the the unorthodox the out of the box uh we've done that there's things that we've tried and and said hey Whatever it takes. And if it's this method, yeah you know, and I could probably run down the list of things over the last seven plus years. Right. But God's done some cool things, even in the unorthodox. Yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. And it's been surprising some of the things that did work and some of the things that didn't we learned from. Yeah.
Vision Statement: Discover, Grow, Serve
00:09:20
Speaker
um So then we move from the mission mission statement to the vision statement, which is very simply discover, grow, serve. yeah All of those um incremental stages and the growth of a disciple who's following Jesus Christ.
00:09:33
Speaker
Obviously, we want you to discover who Jesus is discover what a relationship with him looks like. We want you to grow. in that process to become more like jesus to grow in your faith to become more mature and then take your turn in serving others so that they might get to come to know that so discover grow serve how does that fit into the discipleship plan of our church that's one of your big responsibilities for us our discipleship groups our life groups right other things with the young adults those kinds of things so how are we as a church trying to incorporate those three things into the life of our people
00:10:06
Speaker
Although it is a huge part of ah the structure of our church, and I think you have to have structure to have good discipleship, but beyond the structure, beyond the blueprint, you see the people that are in the ministry. You see the people that are having their hearts closed.
00:10:22
Speaker
intersected, impacted with the gospel and that discover element, some of those things, and I'm looking at this from the structure side now, but we're discovering who Grove Hill is.
00:10:33
Speaker
We're discovering how God has gifted you. yes And we're also discovering Jesus. Some of those people that walk into church for the first time, whatever has brought them there, they're discovering for the first time. Sometimes I think in the South, we think, oh yeah, somebody's been to church, but we've interacted with people and they say, hey, this is the first time in my life that I've ever been to church.
00:10:56
Speaker
And they're discovering who Jesus is. So we look at it from the structure side, but then we also look at it from the ah being intersected and and introduced to Jesus. And then we move to that second phase of growing.
00:11:09
Speaker
um We know that there has to be ah implemented things that happen inside a person's life ah for them to grow. They're not just going to grow because they sit there with a Bible and, oh yeah, this is my Bible. yeah You have to open it up. You have to make conscious decisions.
00:11:25
Speaker
Our life groups, discipleship groups, all those are methods of not just accountability, but true digging into the word, true moments of looking a brother in the eye and saying, hey,
00:11:42
Speaker
let's look at the context of this passage. let's Let's dig in on some of who is Jesus telling himself to be and how is he ah curing humanity in this.
00:11:53
Speaker
So our growing happens in a multitude of ways, but those are just some instances, like I said, life groups, discipleship groups, ah even our kids ministry. I got to give kudos to our kids ministry and our student ministry. Yes.
00:12:06
Speaker
Those are huge pieces of Grove Hill Church. And man, they have in some ways just blown, i think some people's expectations out of the water over the last few years, how they have been discipled. And it's been through things like Awana, the scripture memorization that goes on in there.
00:12:26
Speaker
They put some adults to the test. So things like that are the growing element
Integrity and Authenticity in Church
00:12:31
Speaker
of our church. And then last is the serve. It's the overflow. Yeah. ah The overflow of what God's doing in your life. Right.
00:12:37
Speaker
Matthew 28 is there for a reason. And that's the overflow for us to not keep what God's done inside of us, but yeah to go. Yeah. So that's good. That's good. So the mission kind of serves your north starts, where you want to wind up.
00:12:51
Speaker
the way we get there is kind of through these values that we have. We have six values that we have adopted as a church. um Those six values are kind of the things that we use kind of as the guardrails along our road. This is what we want to be. This is who we refuse to be.
00:13:08
Speaker
So let's kind of run through those real quick while can talk a little bit about them and why they're important, again, for a church this day and age to to establish those and not just establish them, but truly live by them. So the first one is integrity, um which is just the the the earning and keeping of trust from not just our people, but this community.
00:13:27
Speaker
And let's be honest, that's hard. It's really hard. I mean, as a church, we've been accused of being all kinds of things, everything from a cult to a bunch of cowboys. i mean, just all kinds of stuff. And there's no way you can make every person understand who you are as a church.
00:13:41
Speaker
But the Bible speaks about living above reproach. yes especially in front of the world that's watching. And that's something we try to do. We're very open about our our like our books, our financial books. We're open about who we are and what we do.
00:13:55
Speaker
We try to operate in such a way that there's no questions about the intentionality of who we are and what we try to do. So we we want to be people of integrity because if we if we can't get them to trust us in our day-to-day activity, how are they ever going to trust us with their eternity? Yeah. you know So speak to us a little bit about authenticity.
Biblical Foundation and Mission Focus
00:14:14
Speaker
What does authenticity mean as a church?
00:14:16
Speaker
ah We have to realize that when we look at ourselves, sometimes there's not much to look at And I say that in reference to we have to know the sin state that we sit in. oh God, in His graciousness and in in His kindness, gives us the opportunity to join and part with Him. But the authentic origin of where we are is that we start with nothing, and then with Christ, we have something. right So in that nature, i think for sure we have an identity that is...
00:14:51
Speaker
lacking and then is fulfilled with with the person of Christ and I very much so feel like these values too they're not determined by the culture there's not a whole lot of swaying going on at all in fact the values that I know some of the guys that probably sat walking through some of these things and I know ah to their character reference and the way that they follow scripture yeah that these guys as they were looking at this we're letting scripture kind of ah appropriate how they set in it in part some of these values for grove hill church so yeah i think great when it comes to the word authentic i always think of that phrase one of my favorite sentences that i've ever heard is ah god loves you just as you are but he loves you too much to leave you that way yeah and so as a church we really are a come as you are church we want you to come in the situation you are because you're not supposed to clean yourself up before you come to god you're supposed to come to god so he can work on cleaning you yeah
00:15:48
Speaker
And so we want people to come however they are. And so on Sunday morning, we are who we are. We we don't try to pretend. We don't have a lot of glassy lights. We don't have smoke. We don't. we don We just what you see is what you get, which can be scary on some Sundays. But talk to me about being biblically based.
00:16:05
Speaker
ah We will not shun you if you use the NIV. Yeah. Just joking just joking for those of you out there ah We at the end of the day. There's you know multiple translations that we have In in American church culture, but at the end of the day We know that all of those are derived from the Greek the Hebrew the Aramaic and The biblically based nature of that is that we trust the Bible for what it is that there is nothing that needs to be added to nor taken away right and
00:16:38
Speaker
We mentioned it earlier, the whole encompassing parts of the Bible. If we're not teaching on all elements of God's character, if we're not teaching about how he sees his church fit to run, how families should be operated, yeah ah we're doing a disservice if we don't include those pieces. And I think that's what's wrong with some of these churches today.
00:16:59
Speaker
They feel... ah a disservice to the person if they're speaking on this because it hurts their emotions. No, our emotions and the things that of are of the flesh, man, we need to be stripping those things out. And when you place the entirety of the word into the entirety of a person,
00:17:18
Speaker
That's the way God designs it. And we believe that word is inerrant and infallible. Yes. Just as it's given to us. Missions minded. Reason why we have a ah team in Guatemala right now from literally right outside our front door. We teach our people when you step out the door, your mission field begins.
00:17:34
Speaker
and And we believe very seriously the command to go to the ends of the earth with that. we We have partnerships with pastors in India, pastors in Guatemala. We've been doing work in Colorado. We've been doing work in East Tennessee.
00:17:46
Speaker
ah potential of adding more stuff in the coming year and in the years ahead when our missions continue to grow because it's not about us. It's about His glory. So missions is always going to be a part of who we are as a church.
Openness and Support for All
00:17:57
Speaker
um Talk a little bit about openness. That's an unusual word to hide as a value. I think it could somewhat be close to that authenticity, but I think it all in all that we are welcoming to those that will come in that may be in direct opposition, but There is a but.
00:18:18
Speaker
we We love you enough and we believe that God loves you enough that he doesn't want you to stay there. And we will openly love you and we will openly walk alongside you as God is pruning you and as God, through his Holy Spirit, is trying to intersect your life into ways that would honor and please him. So yeah, yeah I would say that's, it is an unusual term sometimes that you you may not see in a church's value statement, but man, it's so true that I think we as believers have to be open and transparent. Yeah.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah.
Innovation in Ministry
00:18:54
Speaker
Last one is my personal favorite. So I'm going to take that one on innovative. and And here's the reason why I love that one, because I've grown up in a lot of different churches, served in a lot of different churches. I have nothing against a church that's preaching the gospel and teaching the name of Jesus Christ and holding up the Bible as the inerrant word of God.
00:19:11
Speaker
um Inside of those parameters, there's a lot of personalities, a lot of, and churches typically take on the personalities of their leadership. So there's a lot of different varieties there. But what we understand is that our culture today is vastly different, even than it was just 10 years ago. yeah um The world is a changing place. one One of the examples I like to use a lot is that in public education now, they're using totally different techniques for for learning because the and attention span of an average teenager is like seven seconds or something, you know?
00:19:41
Speaker
Not far off, I think. Yeah. there's all kinds of things that create barriers between the gospel and people. And what we want to do, this is the reason we're innovative, is to try to break those barriers down.
00:19:52
Speaker
to get people as close to the cross as as we possibly can so that they can understand the the grace that was displayed there, the love that was displayed there for them. So we're willing to think outside the box to try different things. This podcast is one of those examples. Some of the things we do here in the community, some of those examples.
00:20:09
Speaker
We feed football players. we We build ramps at community centers. Yeah. We're doing whatever it takes just to kind of make um the bride of Christ present and visible in our community and to make our community a better place.
Guiding the Church's Direction
00:20:23
Speaker
Because when this community comes better, our church is blessed by that. But more importantly, we want people to be able to approach the gospel without fear, without trepidation, without feeling like they're going to get beat down for whoever they are.
00:20:37
Speaker
And so we want to think a little bit outside the box on how do we put that gospel in front of people who maybe have been burned by it in the past and those kinds of things. So that's our mission, our vision, our values. Cover them in a crash course very quickly. We talk about it a little bit more in some of our Discover classes and things like that.
00:20:54
Speaker
um but But here's the bottom line as a church. Our goal is just introducing people to Jesus Christ. yeah that's That's a win for us. Anytime somebody begins to do self-inspection and ask those questions, you know, what what did Jesus do for me? Why do I need Jesus?
00:21:12
Speaker
What's the condition in my present state? Those kinds of things. um So any last words about Grove Hill, about church in general, where we are, where we're headed before we wrap this up today for Um, man, Grove Hill, uh, I would say, i feel like we're in ah a really good spot because, uh, if those of you who are listening are a part of our church, man, we've done a great job to this point.
00:21:37
Speaker
but let us never get too caught up into patting ourselves on the back because to uphold these takes effort and takes work and takes living by the spirit. Right. Uh, so I would say do that. And those of, you know, the people that maybe,
00:21:51
Speaker
tuning into this and they're listening trying to figure out this church thing for the first time ask questions as a pastor that is one of my biggest uh excitements and joys whenever people ask the questions yeah Because without the questions, we don't know.
00:22:08
Speaker
And I think that when we ask questions as we walk into trying to figure out what God's church, what god what the bride of Christ looks like, yeah we're in a better spot. And so doing this is definitely help for sure.
00:22:22
Speaker
One of the other reasons why this is so important for any church, if you're a pastor that's listening or a church leader that's listening, why of these things are so important is because as your church continues to reach people and continues to grow, what you find is that people come in with their own preferences, their own biases, their own goals.
00:22:38
Speaker
And not all of those are bad, um but many of them can very easily steer your church off its course unless you've got something to more yourself to. So in our church like ours, where we're averaging about 650 people on Sunday, I joke with my people of all the time. It's like putting 650 people in a bus and saying, where are we eating for lunch? Because you're going to get all kinds of opinions.
00:22:59
Speaker
ah Most of them good, but not all of them right. And so this is the kind of thing that keeps you locked in. Again, you you know your North Star, you know where you're going to wind up, and you can lovingly, genuinely look people in the eye and say, I really appreciate your thoughts, but that's not one of the values of our congregation. yeah And we kind of go...
00:23:18
Speaker
So thanks for time with us today.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:23:21
Speaker
We'll be back next week. Have no idea where we're going to head. That's the joy of listening in and being here to be a part of this because you never know what's going to come out of us over the next few weeks.
00:23:29
Speaker
We look forward to hearing back from you if you've got thoughts and ideas of places where you'd like for us to take this this conversation each week, this dialogue. Kyle will be back with us next week. We'll be back with another subject right here. Be sure to click, like, follow the the podcast.
00:23:45
Speaker
And we would love to see you come visit us at Grove Hill Church on Sunday morning.