Our Vision & Mission
VISION
We believe that God is redeeming and restoring all things – mending the brokenness of creation.
His kingdom is a place of wholeness, flourishing and perfect order, which will come in all its fullness when Christ returns. Until that day he calls his church to participate in bringing his kingdom on earth.
We want to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel, and see the revival of cities, the reformation of nations and the restoration of creation. We want to see the sick healed, the lonely placed in community, the captives set free and the wayward heart finding its home in Jesus.
It’s a vision where everything, absolutely everything, is restored to the way he intended it to be.
MISSION
LOVING GOD
We want to be a people who love God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) wholeheartedly and sacrificially, living in a vibrant relationship with Him. Not only is this the natural response to God’s love for us, but we also recognise we can do nothing apart from Him.
We pursue intimacy with God through worshipping Him in all we do and say, through prayer and communion with Him, and by being nourished in His Word. It’s by abiding and resting in an intimate, loving relationship with God that we become secure in our identity, and are fulfilled and fruitful in all that He has called us to do.
EQUIPPING PEOPLE
We believe that everyone has a part to play in God’s incredible mission. We want to equip people to fully embrace their role and responsibility in the Kingdom story; discipling them as they learn to trust and follow Jesus and discover who they are in Him.
We believe that people are God’s creative masterpiece, made in His image and worthy of love and belonging, no matter what their past or present. We want to love and value every individual, partnering with the Holy Spirit as He continues to transform them into His likeness, for His glory.
STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY
We believe that we’re created to live in thriving community, not independent from those around us but intertwined in one another’s stories – doing the highs and lows of life together. We long to see people knitted in and connected, bringing hope and encouragement to one another. This is the beauty of life together.
We desire to see this strong and durable sense of community within our church family. We also long to enable communities to thrive in our local area and within our spheres of influence. We want to work alongside other churches, pro-actively and practically loving our neighbour, seeking to represent Jesus well in the diverse communities God has placed us.
TRANSFORMING THE WORLD
We believe that the church is God’s plan to restore a broken world. We’re part of a national and global gospel story – called to bring hope to the nations, be generous with our resources, intercede unceasingly and radically impact the world around us.
We want to see the lost saved, the sick healed and the captives set free. We believe we are a sent people, called to go into the world to proclaim the Gospel, to reach every nation with the good news of God’s ever increasing Kingdom.
VALUES
LOVE
We’re laying our lives down
God’s great love for us is the inspiration and motivation for all we are and all we do. He has loved us radically first and we live lives of love in response – loving God, others, ourselves and the world around us with all we are. Biblical love is more than just an emotion – it is about laying our lives down in service.
FAMILY
We’re all in this together
We live like a family: everyone matters, relationships matter, and there’s space for everyone. No-one’s perfect and everyone has a role to play. We live our lives in ways that honour and prefer one another. Our sense of being a family community includes our weekly gatherings and extends into the rest of our lives as we live intertwining our stories together.
GENEROSITY
We’re giving our best
Jesus laid down everything for us and has called us to do the same. We seek to be generous with our time, talents & treasures as we sow selflessly into the KingsGate kingdom story. We seek to be generous with our finances in all seasons trusting in God’s perfect provision. There is a radical extravagance to all we do to demonstrate God’s abundant love and kindness He has showered down upon us.
JOY
We’re rejoicing through everything
We see the gospel as good news and we live with the joy of having received God’s loving embrace, as well as partnering with God in the exciting grand adventure of seeing His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Our joy is anchored in who God is, and so we are able to ‘choose joy’ in every circumstance.
DEVOTION
We’re pouring ourselves out
Knowing that we’re completely dependent on God, we live lives devoted to God. Our prayer is faithful, our worship is unending, and our study of God’s word is diligent. We are authentic in our devotion to God which means we don’t wear masks before God or others and our walk matches our talk in all areas of life.
HUMILITY
We’re not the centre of the story
Knowing our true identity as children of God, helps us live truly humbly. We don’t seek to think less of ourselves, but rather we humbly seek to make much of Jesus! We lead and live strongly and with conviction, but we know that we don’t know everything and that we will make mistakes.
COURAGE
We’re stepping out in faith
We know that God is with us no matter what, so, as we boldly live obedient to what He calls us to, we can take risks. We don’t value performance by the world’s standards, but rather value obedience, courage and faithfulness. It often takes courage to continue to trust that God’s Kingdom can break into any situation.
OWNERSHIP
We’re not leaving it to someone else
In a society where everyone feels entitled to be given something, we seek to live like Jesus – by living to give. The problems aren’t someone else’s. The obstacle’s aren’t for someone else. We each take ownership of our church, our community and our world. We get stuck in with whatever we can do to help. The bible shows us that all believers can hear from God, can live and act as ‘priests’ by growing into and living out all that God calls each one of us to. We each are called to disciple others – to equip and empower others, to create safe spaces for others to grow into and flourish.
CORE THEOLOGY
Everything we do is driven by what we believe about God – our theology.
The bible has shaped our vision and mission – our purpose as a a church.
God is three in one: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the 3 persons of the one true God. Included within this belief is that Jesus was simultaneously fully God and fully man.
We believe one is justified by grace, through faith in Jesus’ perfect work in his death on a cross and his resurrection. We believe God’s favour is never earned. We are loved, accepted and adopted by God and our lives are transformed by this.
We celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and modern-day miracles. We believe God is not distant or remote but ever-present and available to lead and shape the Christian’s whole life through the powerful presence of the Holy-Spirit. The Holy-Spirit is our Comforter as well as equipping and empowering each believer for all of life and mission.
We believe the bible is God’s true, inspired and authoritative word to us. Holistically, the 66 books of the canon of scripture make up a unified narrative of God’s people, and God’s interaction with an unfolding plan for all of creation. The bible reveals God’s desire for his good creation and how we are to live within it.
His kingdom is a place of wholeness, flourishing and perfect order, which will come in all its fullness when Christ returns. Until that day he calls his church to participate in bringing his kingdom on earth. The gospel includes the salvation of the individual person, but extends much further to the redemption and restoration of all things. Until we see Jesus return, we live in the ‘now and not yet’ of seeing the future age of the kingdom break into this current age. Put differently, we are seeing heaven invade earth, but currently these realities overlap and intersect.
We believe leadership is a position of service to help others flourish. We believe the local church community is lead by an eldership team. While this function and role may carry a different name in some church communities within KingsGate or beyond, we hold that this role is biblically required. This role is to shepherd, oversee, lead, and care for the local church. We believe it is character and calling that qualifies someone as an elder rather than age, academic qualification or experience. (Titus 1; 1 Tim 3). We believe an eldership team works best with diverse gifting across the team and with mutual honouring between these various gifts and skillsets. The team will function best when it has clear captaincy. This eldership team is ultimately responsible for the doctrine, direction and discipline of the church.
The church is God’s people and the bride of Christ. The church participates in God’s great mission of redeeming and restoring all things. The global church includes all believers in the world and is worked out through local church communities. Church is more than a weekly gathering, but it’s certainly not less than that, as these moments of gathering are a significant part of church life.
We believe that once a person has put their faith and trust in Jesus, and has become a follower of Christ, the bible instructs them to be baptised in water. Christians are united with Christ, this baptism is full submersion into water before being raised up out of the water, representing their death and resurrection with Christ (Col 2:12; Rom 6:1-18).
Human beings are created in God’s image. This means we have a unique role in creation; we are like an angled mirror in His world so that God can reflect His love and care and stewardship of the world, and to sum up and present the praises of the world to God. This dual role is humanity’s intended true vocation.
Both men and women are created in God’s image and hold this vocational responsibility. As humans, we reflect and represent God more fully and correctly as we do so as distinct males and females, celebrating our true God-made differences and uniqueness.
We believe that one day, when God creates the new heavens and the new earth, all believers will be resurrected from the dead in bodily form. We believe Jesus’ resurrection was the ‘first fruit’ of this resurrection (1 Cor 15:23). This is part of the christian’s great hope for the future.
We believe Jesus commanded us to take communion together (1 Cor 11:17-34). This ought to be done in our homes with family and friends, but it is good to do together as a church community as we gather corporately. We take the juice (or wine) and bread (or cracker) as a sign and a symbol of Jesus’ blood poured out and His body broken for our sake. There are many facets to taking communion including our corporate acknowledgement of, meditation on and thanksgiving for what Jesus has done, is doing and will do. In our taking communion there ought to be a heightened sense in which Jesus is with us His people, and in our corporate unity in Jesus.
Kingdom Theology is a framework of interrelated concepts and beliefs. It holds that the Kingdom of the future age (also known as the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God) has been inaugurated and brought forward into this present age through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This means we live now in the overlapping ages of the present as well as the future; we see the new age has been inaugurated but has not yet come in it’s fullness as it will when Jesus returns. We live in this ‘now-and-not-yet’ phase where we see and seek more and more of the Kingdom of God invading our current reality, but we will only experience the fullness of this Kingdom when Jesus returns.
