Athens Vineyard Church

First off, take a gander at our mission statement:

The Athens Vineyard Church:  A community experiencing, expressing, and extending the life God gives through Jesus.

Now, read through our core values.  These won’t necessarily represent all that we are, but they sure help us govern our decisions as a church.

• God’s Awesomeness – We understand that God cannot be packaged or confined by humanity’s limited understanding and practices. We are drawn to worship Him fully. We prayerfully and expectantly seek to live responsive to the current prompting and empowering of the Holy Spirit. We never fully comprehend God, and seek to remain aware of and attentive to what He wants for us as a community.
• God’s Word – We honor the Scriptures as God’s Living Word to govern and guide our faith and practice. We rigorously and prayerfully seek to understand their proper, practical and prophetic meaning for us, and to shape our lives accordingly.
• God’s Mercy – We understand God’s loving mercy as central to His plan and our existence. All require His mercy, and we seek to tangibly and meaningfully extend His mercy to one another and to all to whom we minister.
• Authenticity and Relevance – We seek to be real, not hyped or over-produced, when we worship, when we relate to one another, and when we relate to our communities. We value honesty and transparency in our relationships. We seek to understand and incarnate the gospel in the cultural forms relevant to Athens and Northeast Georgia.
• Creativity – We value the creative impulse that God has woven into our beings, and we encourage believers to explore fresh expressions of eternal truths in all facets of our worship. We also value enduring historical traditions of Biblical Christian expression, and prayerfully seek contemporary renewal of the arts in our practice.
• Connections – We embrace God’s intent for us to live out our faith in relationship with other believers. We encourage and facilitate meaningful life-giving relationships through groups, small and large, and through prayer and counseling.
• Transformation – God’s love changes everything. We are transformed by saving faith, and value the increasing depth and authentic maturity of living with God. Our relationships, including those between the generations and between cultures, are transformed by the constant work of Christ’s love. Our community, and ultimately the world, is transformed by the present power of God incarnated in us and our fellowship.