We are not your momma’s church.
What does that mean? Our culture has moved to a new address. Your mom and dad’s church is still sending messages to the old address. We still got the original message (the unchanging gospel) like mom and dad’s church, but we got the new address to make the delivery. You might see the message of Christ communicated in creative ways that will make you respond in laughter, tears, applause, reflective silence, or to make right choices hours later when no one is looking but God.
We are a nondenominational church.
What does that mean to you? We are not governed by an outside denominational structure. That is not a bad thing. It does not mean that we are not accountable to anyone or run without any governing body. We elect our own leaders and they direct the affairs of the church under the leadership of the Holy Spirit and the Bible.
We are an independent Christian church.
We are a part of a fellowship of churches that encourage all believers to put aside man-made creeds and titles. We simply call ourselves Christians or Christ-followers and use the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice. We refuse to get hung up on non-essentials and respect all groups and denominations who are committed to following Jesus.
We are a simple church.
A simple church or ‘thrift’ church is committed to releasing people to reveal Christ in their everyday world—your neighborhood, work, school, community activities. What are we releasing people from? Busy church activities and dividing the family up. There won’t be whole lot of busy ‘programs’ at Highland. We try to plan things that the whole family can be a part of—even our Sunday morning gatherings (read more on the Highland Kids Page). George Barna’s surveys show that most people who become Christ-followers have no unchurched friends/associations after 3 years of first coming to Christ. Let’s keep things simple and get Christ-followers back out where they can be salt and light!
We are not the Oprah show; we teach for life change.
We love to be students of our culture, to listen and understand others views and opinions. We love even more to be students of Jesus and His teachings. We believe that Jesus and His teachings (recorded in the Bible) are powerful and life transforming. Week after week we will be looking to Jesus through worship, prayer, communion, and soaking up His teachings shared in teaching and creative expression.
We are a church anyone can come to.
We mean it. Come as you are. Our gatherings on Sunday morning are called All Axcess, because Jesus tore down barriers for people to come to the Father, not drawing more lines and boundaries. You can wear a tie if you want to, but don’t expect us to. We’re not about spotting where and how we are different. We are about focusing on where and how we are alike…all imperfect and all in need of Jesus.
We are not a ‘come and see’ church, but a ‘go and give’— a missional church.
We are not trying to develop “couch potatoes for Jesus”, we want to know how we can help you develop as a follower of Jesus (follower implies there’s some action going on)! A missional church is focused on the mission that Jesus Christ gave. It’s a mission that cares for the spiritual condition (and the physical/material) of all people, and tells us that we need think about how we can ‘bless’ or help the people around us, not how we can bless ourselves. We want to help people at Highland to receive what they need to be spiritually whole and be equipped and confident to help and serve others. Our question isn’t “how do we grow our church?”, but “how do we transform our community?”.
