DNA of Fellowship
Our Values
The Gospel
What is the Gospel? Simply stated it is the good news about Jesus Christ. It is all the work that Jesus has done and is continuing to do in our lives. It is the reality that he came to earth, fully-God and fully-man as our redeemer.
While we were living in a state of active rebellion and passive indifference toward him, he initiated on our behalf. He rescued us and continually rescues us even as followers of Christ from the ways we continually rebel against him.
The gospel is the means to a relationship with God which is a free gift given from his generous heart. A relationship with him is not something we can earn through a moral life or by doing good things. This free gift of a relationship with God through the work of Jesus is the gospel.
The gospel also shapes all things in our lives as followers of Jesus. In fact, in Colossians chapter 1, Paul describes the gospel as, “Constantly bearing fruit and growing in the whole world.” For the believer, the gospel continually connects us to God and gives us the capacity to grow spiritually and invest in the growth of others.
How our value of the Gospel translates into daily life:
Whether a particular sermon series is topical or through a book of the Bible, we aim to preach Christ as the Hero always.
In our Kids’ Ministry (Fellowship Kids) and Student Ministry (FSM), we teach from this shape gospel-centered perspective.
We seek to build community through groups and relationships that authenticity and transparency over pretending and performing because in Christ we are already accepted.
2. Pursuing Christ
Unfortunately, we live in a time in church history in our country, where people can try to “do church” but not genuinely follow Christ. Attending church and following Jesus are two vastly different things. This reality is amplified here in Memphis - a place which some have called the “buckle of the bible belt.” It is quite possible to be committed to church, committed to social change, committed to becoming a better person, but not be committed to Christ.
So, we want to articulate very clearly that our church is pursuing the living Christ. That is true of us individually and corporately as a church. We want our lives to constantly be pursuing the personal, present, and ruling Jesus who is alive today.
Jesus is the hero of the story - not us, not our ministries, and not our church. Pursuing Jesus as the object of our worship and affections is critical for our lives.
3. Aligning Biblically
We believe that the Bible is the very word of God and therefore hold it up with the greatest esteem. The Bible is our “textbook”, it is our “play book”, it is our “love letter” directly from God. God’s word gives shape to our Sunday mornings, in our groups, Fellowship Kids and student ministry.
Our prayer is that we will continually submit and align our lives to it. Because it is God’s word, the Bible holds an authoritative position over our lives and over our church.
Our desire to be men and women who honor it, read, study, memorize, meditate, and apply it.
If you are with us for any length of time, we would hope that you would grow in your understanding and application of the Bible.
4. Making Disciples
Discipleship is simply reproducing the life of Jesus in the life of another person. We want to be a church that reproduces, reproducing followers of Jesus. Making disciples is not just a “job description” for our Pastors and staff, but rather a command that Jesus gave to every believer (Matthew 28). In our teaching, our equipping, and throughout our various ministries, Discipleship is our bulls-eye. We want to reproduce the life of Jesus into our lives and others.
Discipleship is not a “program” in our church. In many ways, our church emerges from the discipleship we are living. We want to equip our church to make other disciples in our daily lives.
Being a disciple-making church also has implications on our investment in the city and around the world (missions). In the Great Commission, Jesus included “the ends of the earth.” We believe that disciple-making is a command and not a suggestion.
5. Loving Others
This value is very broad in its application. In fact, Jesus boiled down the whole thrust of his commandments to this... Love God and love your neighbor. What does this look like in the life of our church?
We often describe this value of loving others in 3 specific ways:
Social Responsibility - Generous Living - Racial Reconciliation.
Social Responsibility
We love our city. We believe Memphis should be a better place through the blessing of God’s people living on mission. We’ve even asked the question - if for some reason God chose to take FM off the map, would the people of Memphis would feel that?
We want to be people who are deeply investing in loving our city for the sake of the gospel. We also believe that the fullest manifestation of God’s kingdom here in Memphis is shown through both Good News and Good Deeds. The two in combination are very powerful.
So for us, mission includes both serving others and sharing the gospel. What does this look like? Our people are engaged all over the map to seek the welfare of our city. This is happening in places and in ways we could never even quantify.
Generous Living
Jesus is our ultimate example in this. He traded eternal, perfect fellowship with God in heaven to become a man. He gave up his “rights” to give completely, sacrificially and generously to us.
As Christ-followers, we believe we should do that same - giving freely, generously, hilariously to the world around us because we have been given everything in Christ. This propels us to love one another in community, to love our enemies and pray for them, to serve without ever asking for anything in return, to care about our brothers and sisters in Christ all over the globe, to love the orphan, the widow and the least of these.
So, we dream about planting churches, serving “the least of these”, going on mission trips, tutoring in schools, loving others in our Fellowship groups and serving with the love of Christ wherever we are.
Racial Reconciliation
In coming to Memphis, those in that original core group, made up of Memphians and non-Memphians, dreamt of a church that would reflect the beautiful diversity of the city of Memphis. This was the dream despite the reality that we live in the second most segregated city in America. We are not naive to the challenges of this. We recognized from very early on we were talking about this type of church within miles of where Dr. King was assassinated.Our dream is not just for a diverse congregation of Sundays (the Grizzlies and the Tigers can gather a racially and culturally diverse crowd under the same roof). We want to see diverse dinner tables, birthday parties, and deep friendships which go way beyond just Sundays.
In pursuing racial reconciliation and a multi-ethnic church, we do it because it is the right thing to do. We also want to model this for others so that we can remove that excuse from every other city. If God can do this in Memphis, to his glory, he can do that anywhere. By his grace he is doing that in us.
This value means loving others who may be unlike us culturally or racially. It calls all of us to lay down our preferences for the sake of the bigger whole. Honestly, most of us have never been a part of a church like this. We continue to learn as we go. We must all be willing to lay down our preferences for the sake of the mission.
In God’s word from Genesis to Revelation you see a God of all people - every tribe, tongue, people, nation. Heaven is going to be multi-ethnic, so we ought to go ahead and start living in that reality here on earth. In that moment, the object of our worship will be our focus, not our personal preferences which become secondary. We will all be challenged to lay down our preferences to experience a broader, fuller expression of who God is.
We are not trying to create a church where everyone loves and appreciates everything. Living in a racially diverse church we should all be feeling some “discomfort.” But this also provides us new glimpses into God’s unique design of our brothers and sisters in Christ.