Guiding Principles

The Gospel
The Good News of God’s salvation is at the centre of all we do. The Gospel is our passion. We believe the Gospel, we proclaim it, and we seek to live and minister by means of it.

The Gospel informs every ministry and is our most fundamental point of reference and principle in every action, plan, and strategy. This principle, before all others, guides us in the decisions we make, the solutions we embrace, the way we conduct our ministries and our relationships with others.

Prayer
Prayer is real conversation with God and is vital to growing relationship with Him and ministry in His name. Prayer reflects our belonging and submission to Him, our need for direction and provision, and our acknowledgement that we can do nothing without Him.

We believe that personal and corporate prayer manifest obedience and humility, submitting ourselves to God and His agenda, and for His power. Such dependence nurtures alertness to the spiritual dimensions of our undertakings and equips us with wisdom and knowledge for our calling. Above all, prayer changes things because it is God’s desire that we ask Him to work.

Facilitation
Facilitative ministry is a mindset regarding one’s role, function, and end result. It means to support and assist others so that they can do the ministry. Facilitation includes drawing out the gifts, talents, experiences, and desires of others, and encouraging them to do ministry. Multiplication is inherent in facilitation because the result is that others perform the work of disciple making and church planting as well.

Our vision as well as our mission describe multiplication and reproduction as inherent in what we do. Without multiplication, we cannot complete our purpose. While we can plant churches and make disciples, only they can multiply themselves. The best we can do is encourage them, train them, and by many other means help them learn to multiply.

Teams
Our teams unite in healthy relationships working toward a shared vision. They serve each other, listen to each other, rely on each other’s gifts and strengths, and bolster where each is weak. Our teams accomplish more together than the individuals can working alone.

Our name includes “Team” and our mission includes “working together”. We work in teams because we need the diversity of gifts, knowledge, perspectives, and experiences to accomplish our mission. Working together in teams also exemplifies, for the emerging church, what true fellowship looks like.

Holistic
Our strategies integrate ministry to the whole person, addressing the spiritual, social, and physical needs of people we serve while focusing on the multiplication of disciples and churches.

Holistic church planting promotes incarnational ministry, increases trust among unreached people groups, and fleshes out the Gospel with which we have been charged. Good assessment of the felt needs of the local community are critical to sustainability. Our methods must be reproducible physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. When we have finished and our goals are accomplished, disciples and communities of believers are reproducing and are using their resources, labor, and entrepreneurial capacities to thrive in body, soul, and mind.

Incarnational
As cross-cultural workers, we intentionally surrender our rights to our home culture, language, and ways and embrace those of the host culture. By this, we seek to model Christ, who emptied Himself of the privileges and powers of divinity, taking on human form, to carry out His mission.

Incarnational ministry is critical to multiplication, and multiplication is at the heart of our mission. The more effectively disciples and churches adapt to the local culture and language, the easier it is for them to multiply. Adaptation is effective only when it is subject to careful and critical reflection that preserves the integrity of the Gospel as it engages local contexts.