CCIPH - Stuff About Us... Our Core Values

We treasure all that God is and treasure all that God treasures. God seems to treasure relationships most of all: relationships with his children, among his children, and with those who are not yet his children. It’s all about relationships. And so, we pursue Real Faith, live as Real Family, and seek to become Real Friends.

We pursue Real Faith. You might say that we are a people who have lost our religion. Or, you might say that we are pilgrims who are discovering what it means to dance with Jesus. We are not interested in Christianity, in the sense of an organized religion. Religiosity, with its abuses of power, its systematic legalism, and its dry formality, holds little for a real faith. But we gladly receive the grace of God offered by the blood of Christ, and we are learning what it means to be in vital relationship with the One who seeks us out. And so we glorify God by serving the Lord, believing that every act is a spiritual act of worship.

We live as Real Family. All believers are brothers and sisters, living in the same household with one Father. So we look to the family as a model for our relationships with one another. We live without formal titles, we are simple and organic in our structure, we are generous individuals who are committed to radical hospitality, we live together in community, striving to be as wide as the Kingdom of God itself. As a group, we have limited programs, and no formal membership.

We seek to become Real Friends. Our relationships with God and with one another in turn affect our relationships with our neighbors. This results in strong neighborly relationships in which we strive to become persons of peace who seek justice and righteousness in our society and bring beauty into the city. We practice what might be called respectful evangelism that is non-manipulative and honed to the needs of each individual. We declare that we are not afraid of the city; the city is where many people live, and that means that God loves the city.

From these three core values grow 13 guiding principles: Calling . Grassroots and Organic . Generosity and Hospitality . Life-to-Life . Diversity . Relationships . Lifestyle . Intergenerational . Cooperation . A Body . Repentance . Urban . Counter-Cultural . Creativity and Beauty

Calling. In the Bible, people usually were called by a first name, and sometimes a role (not capitalized, you might note) was added. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle” (Romans 1:1). The most common description the apostles gave themselves was a servant or a bondslave, and they were just “brothers” (and sisters) in the Lord, without further distinctions of varying degrees of honor based on experience and implied by title.

At CCIPH, we try to avoid using titles. So, we don’t have a “Preacher” or a “Senior Minister” or “Associate Ministers.” We even try to avoid using terms such as “Pastor Read” or “Elder Steve.” We also have no written job descriptions. While we each have roles, we recognize that we are all called to do the work of the Kingdom according to our gifts (not our titles), and some of the elders may be double-honored (paid, either full-time or part-time), according to their needs and calling.

Grassroots and Organic. For our purposes, we consider a “program” to be any attempt to mass-produce a work of God. As we study Scripture and seek the Lord on this, we see the early church utterly dependent on being flexible and following the Spirit’s lead. Instead of leadership-driven programs, we seek to free people up to create their own programs. Believing every act is a spiritual act of worship, we attempt to glorify God in every area of life. The Gospel is simple and straightforward, and that's what we want to be.

We want to be organic in the way we do things, from disciple-making to our assemblies. Home-grown and natural, we try to "let" it happen as the Lord leads, rather than create a "system" that runs on auto-pilot. We allow freedom for each small group, and we customize our “presentation” of the Gospel for each person who seeks to know the Lord. We call that respectful evangelism. Our “programs” consist of grassroots initiatives, which are encouraged and mentored by leadership, not created and driven by them. Our staff members do not serve as administrators of programs they were hired to create, but as facilitators of what people are already doing.

Generosity and Hospitality. Two of the greatest marks of the early church were generosity and hospitality. We don’t want those marks to get redirected to our own comfort. The church is the people, not a building. So we purpose to direct our finances toward people over facilities. We believe that we should send to and support worldwide missions, and should be a major source of help and welfare and justice for people in our local community. Hospitality means being a "lover of strangers." We believe that the Christian faith is a call to community and not individualism, and so we seek to establish a family of pilgrims on a journey of faith together.

Our goal is to give a great amount of our budget go for benevolence and missions. We support work around the world, as the Lord allows, sending several members overseas on missions trips. In our benevolence work, we provide help to individuals in budgeting and counseling, with the goal of financial freedom, not just a hand out, so they in turn can be generous in helping others. We challenge our members to a simple lifestyle, that they might no consume resources and might be generous. It is normal for us to have people in our homes, sharing meals, helping out our neighbors, and even doing "radical hospitality" of foster parenting, sacrificial giving, extended commitment, sharing resources, and living in community, sharing a common purse or other expressions of commitment to one another.

Life-to-Life. The New Testament calls believers the “church,” which means the “called out ones.” Their only means of advertising was one person talking to another about Jesus and the Way. We do not copy marketing ideas from the business world, no matter how successful they might seem to be, unless the Lord would direct us to do so. Our evangelism pattern might be called “respectful evangelism.”

Our elders seldom meet for “business,” and our deacons never have. Elders meet for prayer and to discern vision, and deacons serve, and we try not to get distracted with other organizational matters. We do not count attendance numbers, except for predicting room preparation.

Diversity. We do not want to be a homogenous, white, suburban-to-rural, middle class subculture, with very little diversity. The New Testament church was noticeably reaching and interacting with people of all colors, backgrounds and cultures. We dare not “target” and “market” when Jesus simply said to “go” and “disciple.”

We are striving to follow the Lord in overcoming prejudice and in welcoming and loving everyone, no matter his or her cultural background. We do not have a marketing plan or a target audience, but we do pray, and we are ready to share the good news with whomever the Lord puts across our paths.

Relationships. The church is about relationships, both with God and with one another. We don’t want to substitute relationships with policies, or with programs, or with law. If we love one another, we will not complain, we will be marked by our love for one another, and we will joyfully submit to the overseers. Jesus told us to talk directly with the person with whom we have problems, and to always forgive one another.

Led by the example of the eldership, our church strives to be a united body, modeling proper communication and using biblical channels for resolving conflict. We try to speak directly with an oppositional person, and try not to let the sun go down on our anger.

Lifestyle. We do not want to be too busy to be effective in ministry. “Church” can fill up five nights every week, leaving no time to be intimately involved in other Christian’s lives, nor available for our neighbors. Instead, we want to encourage people to be there with generosity, hospitality and good news for our neighbors, then intimately involved in encouraging our brothers and sisters, then celebrating and being built up in the assembly.

Programming at CCPH consists of a Celebration assembly each Lord’s Day (plan on two hours), and small groups (most of which meet once every week or two for 90 minutes). Other than occasional events (once a month worship celebration, bi-weekly outreach for children, occasional all-church fellowship picnic or other events), that is all there is. We strive for direct friendship evangelism, rather than indirect program evangelism. We want people freed up to follow the Lord’s open doors in reaching neighbors, to disciple one another, and to be available for their families.

Intergenerational. We do not want to break up the family, or to segregate people in order to reach them or build them up. The New Testament church did not segregate by age or culture, but reached people individually and in families.

We try to under gird the family in our worship by having children stay in the assembly for the first hour. They are dismissed for classes during the message time for adults (as we do, in fact, recognize that there are differences in levels of understanding and concentration). Each small group is free to structure for children as seems to work best for them. But we often ask the question, “how can we support and help the family, rather than breaking it up?”[1]

Cooperation. In the Bible, the idea of community seems to take precedence over personal property, individual rights, and the pursuit of happiness. Churches cooperated, even to the point of sharing both resources and people. The church in Acts even sent “ministerial staff” from one congregation to another.

Since our beginning, we have purposefully chosen generosity in resources, in staffing, and in our assembly. We want to bless the Body of Christ, which is larger than one congregation or denomination. We regularly schedule joint meetings with other churches to celebrate our unity in Christ.

A Body. We don’t see the concept of “church membership” in the Bible. When God sees the church, he does not have an “inactive members” list. We want to be a living, breathing organism, not an organization. If you are in Christ, you are in the church, and you are welcome to consider this your home. When there is a problem with sin in someone's life, we follow the pattern Jesus established in Matthew 18. (see note 2 below)

Of course, we have no membership list. Some folks come as spectators for months or years, while others are ready to jump in right away. The difference is hard to measure, but only the Lord knows those who are truly his, and those who are truly his know his voice. So, while only those who are willing to submit themselves to the local eldership are given leadership positions, others are given the freedom to explore truth as they wish.

Repentance. When we “lead someone to Christ,” we talk more about “repent” than we do to “accept Jesus.” After all, we come to him, not just him to us. We want to let people know the full cost of being a disciple before they make a decision. So, we want to use words like “discipline” or “holiness” as often as we choose words like “abundant” and “fulfilling.” God wants a relationship with each person and will transform them into new creations. Since God wants the world to be changed, culture is met, embraced, and transformed. This includes communities, families, people groups and society.

Again, we try to follow Bible terms and concepts as much as possible, and we try to win them with Scriptural truth. We seldom have “invitations” on Sundays for fear of manipulating a response, but we regularly challenge people to obey what God is challenging them to do. This process takes time and we will be patient with all individuals. We call that "respectful evangelism."

Urban. The early church was predominantly, strategically, urban. Believers lived in prominent cities, not cowering in fear but changing and transforming their culture from the inside out. We are not afraid of the city, though respectful of its dangers. But our goal is to restore Eden and to serve as a colony of heaven, and we storm the gates of hell with the confidence of victory.

Our challenge is to live in community among those who live here in the city, offering radical hospitality and quietly giving a clear witness to those who are without hope in this life. One block at a time, we want to be leaven among the people as we live out the Gospel in practical ways before our neighbors.

Counter-cultural. The early church seems to have been clearly counter-cultural. Jesus called his followers to be in the world, but clearly not of it. We are imitators of Christ, rather than imitators of the world.

Of course, we want to be culturally-relevant, and we want to come across as authentic. But we need not experience all of the “cool” things of the world in order to affect our society.

Creativity and Beauty: God is a creator; and we who are made in his image are called to be creative. So we seek to explore beauty and art, and to express the inexpressible mysteries of God through artistic outlets. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News!

We encourage the creative arts as ways to express The Story. We are called to bring beauty among neglected places, and the peace of Christ into places of conflict. We declare that we are not afraid of the city, for we are called to be the light of a city on a hill.

[1] See Study #5 for a study on household evangelism.

[2] If someone has a sin problem or is causing trouble between Christians, the friend who noticed it confronts that person directly and privately. If he or she repents, we rejoice! If not, that person will bring a witness or two along, and prayerfully again try to bring reconciliation. If unsuccessful, and there is clear and open rebellious sin, the person will be mentioned before the congregation and will be handed over to Satan in order to be taught not to blaspheme. We have not yet reached the final stage of discipline (and pray that we never will), but we must be willing to go there when necessary.