Purpose, Vision & Core Values

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Missions

Pastor of World Missions
Orin Kidd - Bio

Purpose, Vision,
& Core Values

Key Terminology

Strategic Focus

Mission Connexion

Perspectives Course

West Papua
Indonesia

Bosnia

Camp Bosnia

Ivory Coast,
West Africa

Brazil,
South America

Republic of Haiti

USA

Gordon & Ruth Moritz
Camp Praise

Jeff & Megan Moritz
Fir Point Camp

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Mission Statement

Delighting in, and Declaring, the Glory of God among the Nations.

Purpose Statement:

To glorify God by mobilizing the resources entrusted to GBF for the fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations. Our goal will be to minister to the whole need of mankind- physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Vision:

To focus strategically: (1) on identifying and engaging unreached/least evangelized people groups with a long-term goal of seeing thriving, reproducing churches actively working to reach their own people and beyond; (2) on strengthening the church among people groups where we are currently involved, and (3) on developing avenues of outreach into our local community.

Core Values:
God's Glorification:
"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. Worship is the fuel and goal of missions." (John Piper) God is seeking a worldwide reputation and the redemptive goal of His being glorified by people from every tribe and tongue and nation must be our driving motivation as a local church.

Prayer:
Prayer is foundational to everything we do as a church in the world.

The Gospel:
The Gospel is the unchanging message we are called to live and proclaim. It directs and shapes every aspect of our lives and ministry: In living and proclaiming the Gospel, it is our desire to make Christ known globally, to see Him loved supremely and served unreservedly.

Unreached People Group Focus:
Our growing burden and vision as a church is for those people's who have the least access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With this commitment comes the growing understanding that GBF must be strategically focused (A-6). This means concentrating our efforts and resources on the widest end of the gap - the least evangelized/unreached people groups of the world.

Church Planting Movements:
"The mature fruit of evangelistic ministry is not individual decisions, but Christian community (the church). Esperience has demonstrated that evangelism is not complete without the gathering of new disciples into the dynamic fellowship of a local church. Where such a church does not exist, the missionary task is to plant such a church."

"This is more than building a church building, but rather winning people to Christ, discipling them to obey, forming them into fellowships, identifying and training leaders, and releasing them to grow as a Christian community. The object is not merely to organize a church on foreign soil, but to initiate a Christ-ward movement that will propagate the gospel throughout the entire culture as a whole - and eventually begin to impact other cultures as well." (Antioch Network, Empowering Churches to Reach the Nations. Take from Union Chapel's Vision, Values, Strategies, and Goals).

This strategy involves a commitment not only to see churches planted within least evangelized/unreached people groups, but to see churches planted that will become life changing, reproducing communities; in other words, a movement of churches reproducing churches.

Networking and Partnership (interdependence):
The task is too big for any single church. Partnership is an essential element in mission strategy linking the local church with missionaries, nationals and other organizations. As a church we are committed to networking and partnering.

Whole-church Ownership and Involvement:
The vision for church planting among an unreached people group needs to be owned by the entire congregation. The "church planting team"is larger than any particular group that is sent to a given field. There is no "First-Team" (the Goers), and "Second-Team" (the Senders). As stated above, every member is part of the "Team". Therefore our desire is to see God's people embrace His vision for the people group/s He directs us to, and to discover their place in that vision, whether here at home or working directly with that people group.

This commitment reflects the perspective that the "church is the missionary"; that every believer is a valuable and essential part of God's redemptive purpose. Having a strategic focused ministry to a least evangelized/unreached people group/s has the potential; (1) to significantly enhance ownership within our congregation and, (2) to enable GBF to release God's people into meaningful and effective avenues of ministry.