In order to help people see more clearly what we are trying to do at SSC, we are including in three sentences the vision, purpose, and mission of our ministry as the LORD has given it to us:
1. The vision of SSC is to become a platform from which people can be launched into the ministries God has called them and gifted them to do.
2. The purpose of SSC is to reveal God to the world so that God would save some people out of it.
3. The mission of SSC is to become a covenant community of biblical Christian faith and practice.
- In support of these, we understand the fact that we (as the church) are God’s program. We don’t seek to produce and multiply programs within the church, but to let the LORD do His work in and through us as His people. As we love God and one another, as we seek to serve and be served by one another, as we seek to capitalize on the opportunities the LORD gives to us to preach, teach, and live out the gospel before others, as we work with God in His work in and through us as individual believers, we believe we will fulfill His great command to make disciples who will make other disciples.
Our culture is one wherein people generally can stand ever-deepening relationships for about a year or two. After that, the fires of the Holy Spirit’s sanctification get pretty hot and uncomfortable as things in people’s hearts and characters are revealed. During this season, people make a decision to either embrace the work of God in them and others or to move on to some other place where the fires are not as hot. Most choose the latter. There is usually some reason for them moving. It is usually somebody’s fault for having said or done something that offends them. For the sake of personal comfort, most will run from the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire” that is taking place in them and others by virtue of God’s work through the Word and by means of the relationships they are building with others in the fellowship. These usually find a church where the emphasis is on programmatic structure where members can focus in on doing religious things, and where there is little emphasis on the work of God in individuals themselves. They prefer their programs to God’s program.
The alternative is to stay committed to the fellowship in the midst of the difficulty, pain, and messiness that presents itself within a couple of years’ time. It is in this furnace, in this crucible, where the pure precious metal is refined. Here is where forgiveness is made real. Here is where patience is forged. Here is where compassion and righteous judgment can be learned, expressed in a timely manner, and coexist in peace. Here is where the Old Man is reckoned dead and the New Man is brought forth.
Rev. Sam Pascoe has written a wonderful and concise explanation for why there are so few who will embrace the alternative. He says, “Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise [a business].” The elders are committed to leading a fellowship of believers, not an enterprise. When a church body becomes a business, the whole affair is nothing more than spiritual prostitution.