We Are A Gospel Community

We are safe with God. He relates to us on the basis of His grace, not our performance. All our sins, past, present, and future have been forgiven because of Jesus, who lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we deserved to die. We have everlasting peace with God. Nothing we do can make Him love us more, or love us less, than He already does. Even though we are still deeply flawed and rebellious, He is glad to fellowship with us and also to provide fellowship for us with other believers. By His grace, He is creating a community at SLCC characterized by love, transparency, and help. 

 A Community of Love– God loves us deeply, but He is not here with us physically.  Thankfully, He has made provision for us to experience His love in tangible ways through our relationships with each other. First John 4:12 says, “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” This verse reveals the amazing truth that God’s love is made a flesh and blood reality in our relationships with one another. SLCC is a place to experience the reality of God’s love through life on life, shoulder to shoulder, personal relationships. 

 A Community of Transparency– God sees right through us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is deeply acquainted with the good, the bad, and the ugly of who we are, and He loves us anyway. We are totally laid bare and yet totally safe within His soul-exposing Light, and He invites us to walk in this Light together: “If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). We are invited to take off the mask and to walk in His Light together, to be honest about our deepest sins and struggles, knowing that we will never receive God’s judgment but rather have the assurance of full cleansing through Christ. In James 5:16, we are encouraged to “confess [our] sins to one another, and pray for one another so that [we] may be healed.” SLCC is a place to walk in the Light of Jesus together and to experience the healing of Jesus together.

 A Community of Help– Walking in honesty and transparency means sin will come to the surface. This is not an occasion to judge one another, but to help one another. That is what Christ intends for our relationships with one another when we are in relationship with Him. Galatians 6:1-2 says: “if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” SLCC is a place where we come along side one another in order to bear one another’s burdens of sin, to listen, to sympathize, and to point one another to the loving, forgiving, and healing Savior.