God’s vision has taken a hold of our hearts and lives and moved us to gather a community of multi-cultural people in the city of Saint Paul, who are becoming like Jesus and being Jesus to the world.
Our vision is to be a multi-ethnic, multi-socioeconomic Christian church in east Saint Paul. We are called to be a diverse and inclusive community seeking to be like Jesus. We foresee having roughly equal numbers of Blacks, Whites, Asians, and Latinos; we are families, singles, and kids, Democrats and Republicans, poor and rich, moral and loose. At La Iglesia, we believe in not judging anyone because we know that we ourselves are more flawed and broken than we know—yet more loved and accepted by God through Jesus than we ever thought possible!
The following is a conversation the Church Plant leaders developed during our early planning meetings:
- We value ethnic diversity and will see every individual as an equally valuable member of the human family, as evidenced in the price of God’s Son for every person and His gathering of a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation to Himself.
Pastors and Leaders
- We also value biblical truth as the only foundation for the identity and mission of the body of Christ. So, Scripture will be held in high regard and will be the basis of all that La Iglesia teaches.
- We value developing leaders and will invest time and resources into relationships and opportunities to see people grow in influence.
- We value creative thinking and will give people permission to create, to try, to fail, and to attempt impossible things, using the imagination to dream big dreams for God.
- We value messy ministry and are willing to be involved in the lives of people with real needs and problems, in a spirit of love, on behalf of Jesus who modeled this principle throughout His ministry on earth.
- We value strengthening families and will seek to equip husbands, wives, Moms, Dads, and kids of all ages to relate to each other in love and harmony in a culture that often poses resistance to family strength.
- We value dynamic worship in which people feel the freedom to connect and communicate in praise, and in which people can observe in an understandable way the presence of God within His people.
- We value every-member ministry (“everyone gets to play”) and will seek to empower the entire membership of the church for a ministry to each. Volunteers are the real heroes!
- We value cultural relevance in terms of using new technologies to build bridges between the church and the world around us, and in terms of learning and speaking the heart language of our community.
- We value global thinking in terms of tackling enormous, global issues in Christ’s name as well as church multiplication and will seek to foster a church planting movement that grows far beyond the La Iglesia family.
