Missions

Bringing transformation to our city and world is not easy, and it certainly isn’t guaranteed. However, throughout our history as a church, we’ve discovered four core values that we carry forward as we enter into missions, seeking transformation. These core values help shape how and what we do in missions.

As we read in the Gospel of John, we see that God did not merely send His son out of love, but He sent Him into a challenging context. He sent him into a Roman-occupied, religiously-oppressed, culturally-ambivalent, economically-impoverished, and subsistence-agricultural context. It was a Hard Place. Our call is the same. That is why we as a church family go to the hard places in our City and our World: the unreached, unchurched and under-resourced.

Even after answering the call to hard places, we can still be working out of our own efforts, desires, and dreams. That is why we at Eastbrook yearn for the Holy Spirit to lead just as He did in the early church in Antioch (Acts 13:2-3). We want to be a church body whose efforts and mission can only be explained by the power of the Holy Spirit.

When we reflect on God’s chosen mission model, we are drawn to how relational it is. Whether it is Israel in the desert being invited to join God on the mountaintop, or God sending His Son to live among us, His call is to relationship with Him and with those around us. As we enter into Hard Places, we need to follow this model. We build relationships with those who are broken, hurting, and lost. Every activity we do is done not as an end unto itself, but as a gateway into a deeper friendship with those we serve. Through those relationships, we seek transformation.