What are Core Values?
Core Values are deep-seated motivations that drive all of the decisions we make. Below is an excerpt from a recent sermon given by Nate Wilks, Pastor of Calvary, further explaining what Core Values are and how they function in our lives and in our congregation. Click on the space to the left of the timeline to begin play.
What are Calvary’s Core Values?
Below is a summary of each of Calvary’s Core Values. Continue scrolling down for links to videos of our recent sermon series, Anchors, explaining the biblical basis for each of these Core Values:
- Lordship of Christ – Christ is King, and all of life is about Him and belongs to Him. We gather as a people to worship the triune God in the reality that Jesus is Lord, and the reality is that all areas of our life are to be lived in worship. In Philippians 2:9-10, we are told that “God has highly exalted (Jesus) and bestowed on him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” As we worship Christ as Lord and live in light of that reality, we pull this picture into view today.
- Gospel of Grace – All of the Scriptures center on the Gospel of Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As we learn, live, love and teach the Scriptures we do so in the reality that the Christian life is about God’s gracious pursuit of man and not the other way around. The Scriptures tell us that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:23-25). Grace is the lens through which we read and teach the Scriptures, because it is how God has presented Himself in His Word.
- Life Together – We are not just saved from our sins, but we are saved into a community of faith, united under the Lordship of Christ with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ working in and through our lives. The church is a community equipped by God with diverse gifts; backgrounds; and ideas, and it is the glory of God to make this diverse group into one unified community (Ephesians 4:11-16). Life together means that we walk along side one another in the midst of our struggles, joys, sins, growth and renewal. It means we know one another well enough to speak the truth in love and engage sin and weakness with humility (Eph. 4:15, Gal. 6:1-3). Life together is messy at times, but it means that our commitment to Christ is to be lived out in the context of the body of Christ (His church), as we engage in the mission on which God has called us together.
- Gospel Transformation – We believe that God meets us where we are, but he never leaves us where we are. This is why in Ephesians 2:10 we learn that the reality of our salvation by grace through faith produces transformation, because, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” In Galatians 5, we are told that the power for our ability to “keep in step with the Spirit,” is the fact that believers will produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. As the body of Christ in the world, the church is engaged in the sanctification and growth of the individual. This is why the Apostle Paul says, “Work out (ya’ll’s) salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12b-13). God works through the church, through His people in order to make His people more like Jesus, leading to transformed lives.
- Missional Living – We are all called to grow where we’re planted and are part of the priesthood of believers. We believe that God has placed us in our families, our work environments, and our neighborhoods intentionally for the sake of making disciples of those who do not yet know Jesus. Missional living drives who we are and the decisions we make 24/7, not just what we do on Sundays, the kind of Bible studies we attend or the way we spend our money to support charities and missionaries. Missional living means that every decision we make, from the neighborhoods in which we live to the schools our kids attend to the way we interact with the clerk in the grocery store, is motivated by the identity we have as the people of God, living on the mission of God in the world. We believe that God works through His people at all times.
- Kingdom Renewal – Since the fall of mankind, the world has been steeped in brokenness. It is our privilege to be part of pushing back against the effects of that brokenness in the lives of those around us, as well as in the cultural systems in which we find ourselves. The only solution to the brokenness is the good news that the God of the universe has seen us in our need and has invaded history in the person of Jesus Christ, bringing salvation and hope to the world by His initiating grace. As we steward God’s good creation and push back on what is dark in the world through acts of mercy and justice (Mich 6:8), we get to glorify God by being a picture today of what it means for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Click an image below to play the sermon for each of Calvary’s Core Values:
