Our Essence can be best described as our Doctrine summarized:
Mission Statement
Imago Christi exists to gladly make others glad in Jesus as a gospel centered, missional church, for the city.
Gladness in Jesus
We believe that the ultimate essence of the universe is a glad God.
God the Father exists in eternal enjoyment of His Son through the Holy Spirit. This means that the very purpose of creation and the subsequent story of redemption have gladness at their very essence.
Christianity is not about fixing lives on earth, or about setting up a system of rules for living. Christianity is essentially about God bringing people into the same essential gladness He has in His Son.
To become a Christian means to become someone who is increasingly thrilled, excited, ravished, overtaken, and satisfied in the sufficiency of the Son of God.
Gospel-centered
We believe that the way into the gladness of God is the way forward as well. Faith in Christ’s sufficiency for our gladness is what we are after.
We never move off of the gospel and move on to the errors of religion or irreligion. We never become despondent about God or fixated on rules.
Rather we continue to exalt the finished work of Christ on the cross as the essence of our basis for all of our gladness.
Christian living does not move past the cross, rather it plumbs the depths of the cross and traces the shocking and thrilling implications throughout all of life.
Missional
We believe that America is the forgotten mission field. We are at an unprecedented point in history when the west is drifting into a post-Christian society.
This shifting context demands a shifting strategy. While holding on to the essence of the gospel message, the church has a responsibility and an exciting call to speak the timeless message of Christ into a particular time.
For the City
We believe that the church is to shine as a light on the hill both through the proclamation of the excellencies of Christ and through living that displays this excellence.
We are to seek out the dark places of the world and seek to bring hope and healing through acts of Cultivation.
But that is not enough. We go beyond cultivating healing to creating excess and beauty, seeking to display the extravagant gladness that is to be found in the arms of God through acts of Creation.