ecclesia seeks to live out the Gospel message for the world God loves. It is our mission. Striving to engage the people in practical and real ways. To allow the beauty that is Christ to manifest in the world. To create an awareness of His love and compassion resulting in adoration and love for Christ the creator. 

Gospel

The Gospel is God's Mission to restore man and the rest of His creation to Himself and His purposes. Our world is broken. Something is wrong with virtually all aspects of existance.  Jesus taught that God had other plans for the world than the brokenness what we see and experience. His death and resurrection are God's evidence He is serious about restoring a relationship with every man.

Human life does have beauty. His beauty.  Men universally belive in Justice, Truth and Love because God places these things within our hearts. When we place our faith in Christ's finished work on the cross, we admit our broken condition, our contribution to the problem and have asked Jesus Christ the Gracious Savior to interceed for us by His merits before a Holy God.  Like a good parent ,God responds to our need with a way of escape from desaster. In the event of fire, a good parent will plan an escape route for his children . His focus is first on His children, then on the house. The painful story of human history is the story of God directing His children to safety in the midst of smokey halls and other loud voices that confuse and distract the children from hearing His voice. Ecclesia seeks to boldly proclaim and live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its entirety. The Gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses the redeeming of everything about our existence (soul, family, marriage, friendships, workplace, desires, goals etc.). Such an all-encompassing Gospel has implications for every part of every human being in all every part of the world.
 

People

Human beings are more than the sum of their parts. We cannot neatly divide ourselves into spiritual and physical components. Rather, we have emotions, thoughts, habits, cultures, gender, relationships, etc., and all of these aspects of our nature are integrally woven into our physicality and our spirituality. The Gospel has a great impact on every aspect of the complex human being. The Gospel brings wholeness and restoration to all aspects of the person.  We can see this as Jesus addresses the physical needs of people (Matt 14:15-21), the sexual brokenness of people (John 8:1-11), the ethnic diversity and relational separation of people (John 4:5-42), the physical ailments of people (Matt 12:15), and so on.  The Ecclesia community is a place where people get to share the holistic healing of Christ together.  We get to live it out together and work together to bring it to others who have not yet experienced it.
 

Global

Just as the Father sent the Son (John 5:36-37) and the Son sent the Spirit (John 15:26), so also are the followers of Christ sent into the world to speak of the Good News of Jesus (John 20:21; Act 1:8).  This is the mission to which the entire Church has been commissioned.  Yet, in our contemporary society, we find a consumer mentality that elevates the autonomous individual who is to be served by the religious goods and services of the church.  This consumer-driven slide into individualism prevents us from seeing our connection to the rest of the world and God’s plan to restore it to himself.  For those who follow Christ, the redemption of the world is not a passive spectator sport.  Rather, it is something in which we are all intimately involved.  Thus, Ecclesia seeks to foster relationships with other believers around the world so that we can link arms together in ministry.  As we participate in the connectedness of the Body of Christ, we bring glory to its head (Eph 1:10, 22; 4:15; 5:23; Col 1:18).  We do not work as individuals who will single-handedly save the world, but rather we work together toward a common vision of seeing the redemptive work of God take place all around the world.  As we understand the headship of Christ, we also simultaneously understand the fact that we are his hands, feet, and voice.
 

Mobility

Obviously, Christ is not physically present in the world today like he was with his disciples. Rather, his healing touch comes through those who follow him. In this sense the followers of Christ operate as his hands in the world by virtue of bringing the healing touch of Christ in the name of Christ. For Ecclesia, this translates to an extensive involvement from our community in the various opportunities for serving in social justice ministries around the city (e.g. feeding the homeless, caring for the sick, providing for the widow and the orphan and of course praying for the sick, etc.). Such ministries are a natural consequence of seeing the Gospel at work for people. Just as Christ’s literal hand is no longer present in the world, neither is his literal foot.  And yet the ministry he started has continued to travel throughout the globe. To be the feet of Christ is to be the sent people of God. Our understanding of Christ’s mission through his Church (Matt 28:18-20) beckons us to move beyond our comfortable neighborhoods into the poverty of the city and into the remoteness of the village and into the distant lands which have little or no understanding of the Gospel of Jesus. As we realize our identity as the feet of Christ, we find ourselves going to and fro throughout Austin and throughout the rest of the world to bring the healing work of Jesus, His Gospel, to the whole world.
 

Voice

“How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent?” (Rom 10:14-15).  People must call out with their voice to the one who saves, but in doing so, they are responding to a message they have heard. That message is the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus. To be the voice of Christ is to speak his message of salvation and redemption to a broken world.
 

Transformation

Though Ecclesia gives high priority to its external focus on it mission to the surrounding culture and the world at large, it is also equally true that Ecclesia gives high priority to its internal focus on equipping the saints. We recognize that Christ has given gifts to his people, some of which are specifically for training people to do the work of the ministry (Eph 4:11-12). The outcome of this equipping work is that the followers of Christ grow in unity, knowledge, and maturity, such that they are transformed into the likeness of Christ himself (Eph 4:13; 2Cor 3:18). The equipping of the saints is a key component in the overall mission of the church.  We do not want to send out untrained and unskilled people who will be unable to endure the trials and temptations that accompany the kind of intense ministry into which Christ’s mission calls us. Rather, we devote great attention and resources to the task of equipping people for all kinds of service (e.g. School of Theology, home communities, etc.). The goal of these ministries is to help people grow in Christ's image so that their service to the world will also be like that of Christ.
 

Community

The mission of the Church simply cannot be fully realized by an individual, or even by a collection of individuals. Rather, it takes a unified community to live out the mission to which Jesus as called us. It is only in the context of community that we begin to understand the nature of following Jesus, and it is only with the support and encouragement of our community that we can continue in our pursuit of Christlikeness. The multitude of “one another” statements in the New Testament come into focus and become applicable only in the context of community. Thus, Ecclesia lays great emphasis upon the necessity of community in order to live out the radical demands of the Gospel of Jesus.
 

Roots

In the church today we are guilty of pragmatism: asking the question 'what works?' before we ask the question 'what is true?' The result is doing ministry for ministry's sake as opposed to doing ministry for the Glory of God. When we start with God (our theology), we realize that definitions of success are very different than when we start with pragmatism.  From a clear understanding of the Gospel we should adopt Biblical values into our lives that become the driving force behind how we do ministry (philosophy of ministry). With a Biblical understanding of how ministry is to be done, we gain a vision that is God-honoring and Gospel-centered. This results in the creation of a structure (function). Each piece along the way is crucial to the next as one piece of the function of the church is built upon another. The Western church is in decline today because we have misunderstood the Gospel and we have not integrated its truth into our lives. Ecclesia began with a deep commitment to the Gospel and from there we continue to check to make sure that everything we do flows out of our theology and values.