We live in a time and place where so many people orient their lives around things that can’t truly satisfy them and they live in lesser stories than they were designed to inhabit. Sadly, this reality is showing up among followers of Jesus and those not yet a part of the family of God. Sometimes this appears harmless; other times it’s obviously destructive. Consumerism, materialism, burnout, broken families, addiction and substance abuse, anxiety and depression - all a result of misguided visions of “the good life.” All of it falling short of the glory for which we were made.

Yet, there are increasing whispers and desperate cries for something real, to discover a story that paints our lives in vibrant colors and redeems each story with divine purpose. God is awakening us to tell and live a better story. We are not called to merely be a stable family for those who have found our doorstep, but to run out to meet the prodigals on the road to welcome them back home - to focus our scattered vision and busy lives to change the narratives that cannot truly deliver the full life that people desire. We cannot afford to rest on the breakthroughs of the past nor settle for creating a church we like. We must redirect all our energy and resources to tell the one story that changes everything.

Therefore, we dream of becoming a tribe relentlessly focused on helping people live the true and better story God is writing...we will refuse to settle for ‘what is’ in our lives and the lives of our neighbors and networks to boldly proclaim ‘what could be’ when Jesus is put at the center. This would mean we would not merely be a harbor for the hurting but a hub of creative co-authors seeking to rewrite our narratives of brokenness and boredom into stories of redemption and renewal. We believe such a commitment requires nothing less than a soul-level awakening to God’s dreams for each individual and family and, if embraced, will unleash unstoppable waves of creative telling and living out God’s story in our stories. Such a collective vision for our church will be tangibly visible in people walking in loving, joyful freedom as sons and daughters of our Father, our homes and tables becoming the places where stories are redeemed, where new communities are forming and multiplying annually, where we equip neighbors to live better stories, with ministries incubated and missionaries deployed and a training hub for a new generation of storytellers at the center.

This is the story God is calling us to write in our time. It’s simply the story of Jesus and his heart to reconcile all that’s broken and deliver people from sin, shame, and settling for less. It is his story we seek to tell through people experiencing the ‘instead :of’s’ only he can bring. We will tell this one, unified story written 5,000 ways. We will, with young and old, among individuals and communities and going near and far, bear witness to 5,000 stories of genuine transformation as we learn and then teach others to walk in the ways of Jesus.