What We Value

We want our church to be organized around a crystal clear understanding of the gospel message. In order for our church to glorify God and grow into spiritual maturity, the gospel must remain at the center of our life together. The message of Jesus Christ’s sinless life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection is not only good news for non-Christians, it is essential for the life of God’s people. There is nothing in the life of a church that should rival the proclamation and application of the gospel.

The preaching of God’s Word is the lifeblood of his church. At RGC, we intentionally design our structure and practices to enable the preaching of God’s to be the focal point of our church. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that our songs, Scripture reading, home group discussions, etc all take their shape around the Sunday morning sermon. Our prayer is that the sermon’s echo wouldn’t stop on Sunday afternoon, but would reverberate throughout the week in personal conversations and group discipleship. We believe that the main diet of our preaching ministry should be expositional preaching – preaching that faithfully exposes the biblical text on its own terms. Ideally, the main point of the Scripture text is the main point of the sermon, applied to the lives of the congregation. We want RGC to be a people that prioritizes the preached Word and eagerly responds to it in faith-filled obedience.

Worship is about what we value most – what we ascribe worth to in our lives (The word literally was formed from “worth-ship”). Worship in the Bible comprises all of life, not just our music! If we are worshiping God during the week, the corporate gathering ought to be the culmination or grand finale of one’s week of worship to the Lord. When we gather together, it should be obvious that the Lord is the treasure of our hearts. While our gatherings will have a distinctly vertical dimension in its orientation toward God, it is not meant to be our personal quiet time! There is also a significant horizontal aspect, as we teach one another through our singing. Our singing, prayers, Scripture reading, and listening to the sermon are not merely for worship, but for edification. They are designed to lift up Jesus Christ and build up his people.

Every Christian is a disciple or follower of King Jesus. Discipleship is simply the process of helping one another grow in Christian maturity in the image of Christ. At RGC, we want our discipleship to be both deep and deliberate. We want our people to flourish in their knowledge of the Scripture and theology so that the roots of their faith grow deep and strong. No one drifts into discipleship! Rather, it happens deliberately through prayerfully receiving the Word, both publicly and personally. Within the life of our church, no member should be anonymous. Each should be connected in discipleship relationships within the body. We want to create a discipleship infrastructure for this type of growth to happen. Here are the discipleship priorities for every church member:

1. Corporate Worship
2. Corporate Prayer
3. Home Groups
4. Other Meetings
   • Discipleship Class
   • Men’s & Women’s Groups
   • 1-to-1 Discipleship

One of primary marks of a Christian is his or her self-giving, sacrificial love for God’s people in the community of faith. At RGC, we want to be known as a church full of people who selflessly serve one another, humbly mute their extra-biblical preferences, generously open their homes and resources to one another, and eagerly minister within the body of Christ. As we serve one another, our church will build itself up in love, and those without Jesus will recognize that we are followers of Jesus.

There are few more important things that a church can do together than pray. Prayer is a testimony of our individual and corporate dependence on God. It demonstrates that we believe that God is God and we are not! Prayer also evidences our love for each other. One of the best and most important ways that we selflessly love another is to faithfully pray for one another. In the New Testament, we not only see the priority of personal prayer, but also the priority of corporate prayer. As the body gathers regularly to pray, we will have increasing ways to praise God for answers to prayer, to see him at work in our midst, to express our care for each other, and to cry out to the Lord for his help as we seek to be faithful ministers of the gospel in the West Valley and around the world.

King Jesus has given each of us the assignment and the privilege to be his ambassador to a world in need of him. At RGC, we expect our members to increasingly know and be able to articulate the gospel, to develop gospel oriented relationships, and to seize opportunities to proclaim the good news to those around them. While we may have some evangelistic programs in and through the church, we emphasize the equipping and personal responsibility of our members to reach the lost. Our church schedule is pretty mere, and one of the reasons for its simplicity is to free up our members to weave their lives into the lives of those who need Jesus.

We believe that the mission of the church is found in Jesus’ “Great Commission” to his disciples before he ascended. The church of Jesus Christ is to make disciples among the nations, knowing that our God is gathering a people for himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The gospel’s power extends beyond national borders and cuts through ethnic boundaries. It is a gospel for the entire world! Our desire is for each member of RGC to be a “global Christian.” Not in the sense that every member is expected to go to the nations, but that every member prays for the nations and gives so that our church can support and mobilize for global work, armed with a mindset shaped by the Great Commission. Our missions philosophy is to support strategic gospel workers well - through finances, support, and visits for ministry and care. Our hope is that many will go out from our body to proclaim the gospel and help establish churches among the nations!