The Vision of Hope

At Hope Reformed Church we seek to be a church growing in relationship with God, each other, and our community. This is a big vision for a small church, and it will require all hands on deck, “Keeping in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). Prayerfully, we believe that God will help us to accomplish this vision for His church.

Our vision grew out of a planning meeting held by our core team when we were first starting the church. At that time, we looked at our core values and spent time talking about what our church would look like in the future if we were really living out of those values. For each value we identified effects that would happen as the value was realized.

As we reviewed all of the various effects across each of our core values, we realized that most of the effects that we prayed would mark our church could fit into three categories or areas of focus. Our directional focus became looking upward, looking inward, and looking outward.

We will seek to look inward knowing and praying for each others’ needs; sharing our lives, cares, struggles, and joys; and encouraging, correcting, and forgiving each other in love. It is important for God’s people to grow in their relationships with each other. Ephesians 4 reminds us that we are to use our individual gifts to build up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12). Paul goes on to write, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16

We will seek to look outward making every effort to transform the world and not be transformed by it, being missional in our daily lives, seeking, listening to, and humbly serving any who are outside of the church. God calls each of His sons and daughters to serve as ambassadors, representing Him to the world around us (2 Corinthians 5:20). As God’s “peculiar treasure” we should reflect His goodness and grace to the world around us.