Our Vision: Mission 614 a Community of Communities

Part One: Our Vision

This month we continue in the shift of our attention from the development of Converge Group Coaching & Discipling Center to the vision of Mission 614. Here are some bits of the dream for this church startup as we move forward:

We are creating a discipling culture for people who want to learn and discover more about God. It’s an atmosphere where learning is experienced as much as it’s taught, where questions can be asked, and doubts expressed as people work through the difficult aspects of faith and trust.

Our hope is, that in this post-Christian culture we live in, skeptics with questions will feel comfortable enough to hang out with us long enough to ask about the things they need to know. We want those who are disengaging from church or faith to feel like they can talk about the problems they have with organized religion and find resolution and restoration rather than rejection.

We strive to present a cause worth laying down our lives for as we help others find and experience the love, acceptance, and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Serving. Loving. Caring. Giving. There are so many ways to live a radical life of faith as we trust God and serve people in normal daily rhythms rather than relying on serving through programs.

Here is a little bit of vision for our church startup:

Through our family on mission, we call Mission 614, we want to help people to establish and maintain three key discipling relationships…

• know God more than before and continue getting to know Him more and more each day as we focus on our UPrelationship with God … it’s Worship. and

• really get to know one another by building the bonds of friendship to create a healthy community of people who do life together as we focus on our IN relationship with each other … it’s Community. and

• care about those who need and are looking for a space to connect, belong, and find a cause worth living for (we refer to these individuals as People of Peace) as we focus on our OUT relationships with people of peace in our lives … it’s Evangelism.

We are a community of “sent” people who intentionally choose to go out in search of those who have lost their way rather than wait for others to come to us. We are people who are radically committed to making disciples, who make disciples, as we focus on building the types of relationships that can forge such an idea.

This is an extended family who love to gather together for worship, as we recognize it as the heart of discipleship where God interacts and speaks with us in ways that doesn’t happen in other settings. We join together and experience the "otherness" of God.

Thus, we are forming a community, a family on mission, to do life together and to better share the Gospel with the people of peace we meet. Our heart is to really focus on the things Jesus seemed to care about: making and growing fruitful disciples (learner-followers) and willing to live in the radical way it would take to bring it into reality.

You could say we are creating an extended family of missionaries who are being sent out to communities across the greater Columbus area and beyond. One thing we soon realized as we walked this path is with this missionary approach to life and ministry there would always need to be room for one more to join us at the family table.

We wanted to start a church for people like this, so we have set out to create such a family and we call it Mission 614.

Our names are David & Kandy Bennett, and now you know a little bit more of our story.