OUR VALUES

We believe that mission is an inherent part of a Christian’s DNA.  Jesus’ great commission found in Matthew 28:19-20 states that his followers are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all of Christ’s teaching(s).  This is a commission that we seek to reverently and joyfully live by. Christ’s call to live a missional life is not something we merely read about, study, agree with, nor understand on an intellectual level, but we pray that it would be deeply integrated into who we are as children of the one true God.  Though many of us are not called to be oversea missionaries, we are all called to live missional lives. We are the missionaries— Queens is our mission field. And we pray that his Kingdom come, his will be done, here in our city as it is in Heaven.

We admit that there are many reasons why an individual may choose to engage in Christian mission; some may do it out of moral obligation, others may do it out of peer pressure but we believe that genuine, powerful, God-ordained mission is a fruit - an overflow - of a genuine, salvation-producing encounter with the risen Christ. We pray that our congregants would meet and be radically transformed like the Samaritan woman in John 4. Upon understanding that she was fully known, fully forgiven, and fully loved by Christ, she runs back to her city with a message: “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Christ?” And in the same way we pray that our congregants, upon personally encountering the real Jesus for themselves, would be overflowing with a message of invitation for those who have yet to meet him.

We profess that there is no such thing as a follower of Jesus who does not serve His Church.  This is because every believer is called into the process of sanctification. And if the aim of sanctification is to ultimately become more & more conformed into the image of Christ, and if Christ, through his incarnational ministry came not to be served but to serve, then the organic fruit of our discipleship is to have a servant heart like our Lord’s (Matt. 20:28, Mark 10:45).

The power of the Gospel does not produce consumers but givers. Christianity is not a consumeristic religion, producing people who only ask, “what can I get out of this?”. In contrast to this, Christianity revolves around the Gospel which states that by grace we are saved, by grace we are given all & immeasurably more than we could ever need in Jesus Christ. As a result of this deep soul-satisfaction, authentic Christianity produces people who do not ask, “God, what can you do for me?” but people who ask, “God, what can I do for you?”.  Furthermore, the vehicle for Christian growth and maturity is not only knowledge but it is also service. We do not desire to be a stagnant church, an idle church, nor a lazy church, but a church that diligently and honestly seeks to serve & love our neighbor as Christ did.

At GPC we are passionate about building, nurturing, maturing, and redeeming broken character and integrity. Our vision is to see an assembly of believers striving to live an honest life before the omniscient God. We believe that an organic outworking of salvation is sanctification. And it is through the process of sanctification that God sovereignly transforms us from the inside out more and more into the image of Christ. Because progressive sanctification operates at a heart level, we thus observe that God steadily & faithfully renews, restores, and builds our character as we follow him.  Our prayer is that our hearts & our hands would be one and the same; that there would be no disconnection in what we believe and how we live & what we preach and what we practice. We confess that we do at times have broken character & broken integrity. And though in the eyes of the world we may appear to be balanced & whole, in the eyes of Christ we sometimes appear to be white-washed tombs or a cup that is clean on the outside but dirty on the inside (cf. Matthew 23: 25-28). And more than merely turning to self-help books and adopting a new mindset, we believe that it is only through the power of the Gospel that we can experience true inside-out transformation.  We desire to follow Jesus with integrity, that we may bring him much glory both in the public & private arena(s) of our lives.

We declare that prayer is pivotal. Prayer is a difference-maker. Prayer is a catalyst. Prayer is powerful. We will not push the act of prayer to the margins, we will not overlook it, we will not ignore it, but we will bring it to the forefront of our ministry.  We profess that the difference maker behind all that we do administratively, logistically, ministerially, is indeed prayer. Prayer centers us to God; it causes us to soberly acknowledge that it is by God’s hand, God’s providence, and God’s omnipotence, that our ministry exists. Prayer postures us to acknowledge that though we may be gifted & skilled to lead & serve our ministry, we must wholeheartedly & faithfully depend upon God. Prayer causes to acknowledge the things that we cannot do and the things that only God can do. Prayer causes us to acknowledge the beauty and the wonder of grace; and our utter need of it. As faith pleases God, we strive to offer our prayers from a heart of faith; not a heart of cynicism (praying but not believing God will answer) and not a heart of skepticism (praying to test if God will answer) (Hebrews 11:6). As Jesus intentionally carved out time & space for personal prayer, we too will take after our Lord’s example by being faithful to having regular prayer gatherings. Though we agree that we should live a lifestyle laced with prayer we also see the importance of having an undisturbed & consecrated time dedicated exclusively to it.Item description

We believe that as created beings we do not have the capacity nor ability to anything about the Creator apart from the Creator choosing to reveal something about himself to us.  And thus apart from God’s self-revelation we can only guess, assume, and infer about what God is like. God in God’s sovereignty, as the Creator, graciously chose not to be a mystery to his own creation. Out of love and out of grace, God reveals himself to us through his word. And as a church that seeks to follow him & know him, we turn to his very own word; the Bible. Furthermore, we believe that the purest form of revelation of God is the person of Christ. Though Jesus was very man, he was also very God. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him, all things were created...He is before all things, and in him all things hold together...for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.  And the clearest revelation of Christ we have access to is found in the Bible.  If we seek to be a ministry that follows after the heart of God, we must know God. And knowledge of God is knowledge of God’s word.  And thus Scripture must be the foundation behind all that we believe & do. Our aim is not to subjectify Scripture, picking and choosing what passages and principles we agree with or disagree with. But our aim is to treat the word of God as alive and active, applicable in all seasons of life, designed to convict us, challenge us, and change us.  With a heart of a humility and a willingness to be teachable, we approach the Scriptures, not to make them subject to our preferences and personal opinions but to make ourselves subject to the Scriptures.