Goatville Worship Community

We are a community where:

• We are safe to be goats -

While many of us might speak of grace and freedom, it seems few really experience it in our personal assurance with God or acceptance in Christian communities. Our prayer is to be set free from the fear of condemnation and rejection such that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Rom 5:20). We envision a community where the gospel creates an entirely new self-image. A community where it is safe to be more flawed than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared to hope—at the same time! We believe that Christ centered grace is not just the A-B-C’s but the A-to-Z’s of the Christian life. Where the gospel is not just the way to enter life with God, but is the way to address every problem and is the way to grow at every step. We are a community of grace because Christ makes up for our sin as our “lamb without blemish,” a lamb that was once foreshadowed as coming from “the sheep and the goats” (Ex. 12:5).

• We are in search of total Christ -

Is it too much to want all of Him? Is it naïve to expect that we can transcend the history of the “either/or” pendulum swings in Christian spirituality? As the “Word became Flesh and tabernacled among us” (Jn 1:14), we seek the holistic presence of Christ that is both our divine principle of faith and practice and our divine presence in communion within our human experience. We desire Christ to be our prophet as we encounter him through his living Word. But we also desire Christ to be our priest as we are united to him through his sacramental presence in worship. And yet still, we desire Christ to be our King as we are shepherded by him into a mercy-giving community. We are a church-in-process hoping for greater things in the experience of total Christ the fullness of him who fills all in all! (Eph 1:22-23)

• We love our city, all of it!

In Christ and in the city, we are urban-facing if not face transcending. We envision a community that will look, feel, taste and sound like urban New Haven. But we will seek to do this in a way that is both directed by Christ our Head from the transcendent context of our city in heaven and “flesh out” in the particular context of our local city on earth. In Christ, we believe God shows no partiality with regard to town-gown, rich-poor, black-white-brown, red-blue, male-female, boss-employee… for in Christ, there is no distinction! (Rom. 3:22) It is our ambition to be grounded in the overwhelming grace of the gospel as it transforms us our city, and our world!