Our Mission

We seek to be used of God to develop fully surrendered followers of Christ.

Our Core Values

The core values of Valley View Christian Fellowship are Truth, Missional Living, Community, Discipleship, Prayer, and Worship. These values serve as the foundation of our ministry and serve to guide us as we pursue the mission of God and the God of the mission.

Truth

Although we cannot capture Truth in a sentence, we find its essence in the Triune God. In His grace, the Father has revealed Himself through the Son by His Spirit. So, Truth is found in the Person of Jesus. He is the Truth, and the Truth sets us free (John 14:6, 8:32).

God’s self-disclosure to humanity is found in a sacred compilation of various works known as the Bible. God has given us 66 books (39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament) written in three languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a bit of Aramaic), over a period of more than a thousand years, by over 40 authors on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe). Authors include kings, peasants, philosophers, fisherman, poets, statesmen, and scholars. Books cover history, sermons, letters, a hymn book and a love song. There are geographical surveys, architectural specifications, travel diaries, family trees and numerous legal documents. It covers hundreds of controversial subjects with amazing unity. It is the best selling book of all time and is now available in over 3,000 languages. It is our guide to Truth...our compass to the Triune God. The Bible is an essential and infallible record of God’s self-disclosure to humanity. These Scriptures are fully inspired by God. We search the Scriptures to be introduced to the Triune God and the Holy Spirit leads us to discover the Truth that sets us free.

Our prayer is that we would develop a taste for truth – even difficult ones. We desire to couple Truth with grace in hopes that we might also introduce non-believers or re-introduce dechurched believers to this same God. We want to lovingly and gracefully extend Truth to a culture desperately seeking answers, hope, and meaning.

Missional Living

Jesus declared, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20)." The Great Commission is the basis of our mission and is not an option for the believer in Christ.

Our response to the Great Commission is to live our lives missionally. We want to live the mission of God every day, everywhere we go. We want to be intentional about life – to live life on purpose. Acts 17:26 says that "He (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation..." This means that God is intentional about placing us in our neighborhoods, our work places, and our classrooms, on purpose. Life is not a random accident; rather, God designed it with intention and purpose. Missional living means that we live the way of Jesus in front of the audience that God has given us. We are called to serve our neighbors in order to demonstrate the rich compassion of our Lord. In sharing the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus radically taught that our neighbor is anyone in need, regardless of social status, race, or even religious preference. In serving those in need, we reflect for them the love, compassion, grace, and mercy of our God. We desire to mobilize our membership for life-affirming outreach and ministries of mercy within our community and beyond.

We desire that our members show compassion daily for the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the outcast. We are to ask ourselves, "Who can I be a neighbor to?" Those who follow the way of Jesus will be known for their love towards others. We love, serve, and care for those that God has "determined" us to be around in the hopes they will see Jesus in us, hear us speak of Him often, and be drawn to Him. We extend our lives missionally when we introduce or re-introduce our neighbors, co-workers, family and friends to the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Acts 1:8, the empowerment for this missional life comes from the Holy Spirit. We are not left to merely "try hard" in fulfilling the mission. We are empowered supernaturally by the Holy Spirit through baptism in the Holy Spirit to become effective as we live the mission of God every day.

Community

Experience shows us that the motivation birthed in us through hearing the Word of God preached on Sunday usually doesn’t last very long. We have good intentions, but often don’t follow through. The reality is that without the power of God working in us and without people in our lives to hold us accountable for life-transformation, our walk with Christ grows stale and becomes mechanical and empty. Spiritual growth isn’t going to happen unless we’re connected and we’re doing life deeply together. One of the most common illustrations used to help us understand the nature of the church is that it’s a body. If you cut off a finger and throw it aside, it doesn’t keep growing, or moving, or playing its part. When a finger is isolated from the rest of the body, it shrivels up and dies. The more you isolate yourself from deep, authentic, Christian community, the more damage you do to your own joy.

When it comes to growth into the fullness of Christ, nowhere in Scripture are we spoken to as individuals removed from the community of faith. Almost every book in the New Testament is addressed to the saints in some particular city. All the admonitions given to believers in the epistles are not given to individuals as much as they are given to a group, a body that’s striving after it together. Even in those books that are addressed to an individual, teaching is given to the individual in order to pass it on to the body at large. Our faith is inescapably communal. In fact, everything God does in the life of an individual is meant to pour back out into the community. For example, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” God comforts us in our time of trouble so that we might comfort others in their time of trouble with the comfort we received. What God does in our life is supposed to benefit others. Again, we see that there is a strong focus on community. 

This type of community is impossible without authenticity. Webster defines authenticity as, “true to one’s own personality, spirit or character.” Authenticity, which is closely related to the virtue of honesty, is the fertile soil in which the image of Christ grows within each of us. Community thrives when people are authentic and genuine, yet it is misleading and disingenuous when authenticity is sparse. Our prayer is that God’s people would develop a holy discontentment with where our lives are and embrace the hope of what our lives can be with the help of the Holy Spirit and the encouragement of our spiritual family.

The road to authentic biblical community is the pathway of servanthood. Biblical community is built as everyone does his or her part in the body of Christ and puts the interests of others ahead of their own. Jesus said it this way, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave –  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28). Jesus set forth an example of servanthood for all who would follow Him by washing the disciples’ feet, which was a disgusting job. Normally, the lowest person in the social hierarchy would do it. It was absolutely unthinkable that anyone with authority would perform this task. Yet Jesus, the Master and Creator of the universe, got on His knees and began to wash the disciples’ feet. After Jesus finished, He told the disciples why he did it. Jesus said, “Do you understand what I have done for you?...You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:12-17). Jesus washed their feet even though He was above them as their Master and Teacher and then charged them to do the same for each other.

We have been charged to serve one another in the church. Hebrews 6:10 says, “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.” In other words, we express our love for Jesus in an authentic way when we serve the body of Christ. Another way of saying it would be that we show our love for Jesus when we wash His bride’s feet. Foot-washing expresses itself in a myriad of ways from changing diapers in the nursery, greeting people at the church door, teaching children the way of Jesus, mowing lawns for widows, providing childcare for single moms, serving meals for the hungry, or attending to the needs of the less fortunate. Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve, and if we are to follow Him we must do the same.

Discipleship

There is an ancient blessing that is still used among rabbis and their disciples today. It says, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” In other words, the goal of the disciple is to walk so closely behind his or her rabbi that the dust stirred up as he walks gets all over you. When Jesus said, “Come and follow me” He was inviting those who would learn from Him to walk closely behind Him and live the way that He lived. To be a disciple is to live the way of Jesus. True disciples of Christ are not formed through gaining cognitive knowledge about Jesus; they are formed through learning to live the way of Jesus over the course of a lifetime. The metaphor of breathing in and breathing out provides a great picture for us to understand this lifelong process. Physically, if a person cannot breathe in and breathe out, they will soon die. Both breathing in and breathing out are necessary for survival. That's also true spiritually. If we want to follow Jesus and know Him deeply, we have to breathe in and breathe out.

Breathing in is when we drink deeply of Jesus and His presence in our lives, and breathing out is when we live the mission, serve His kingdom, and serve other people. Breathing in is when we learn what Christ wants of us and breathing out is when we do it. Breathing in is learning the truth and breathing out is living it. Christians in America usually excel at breathing in. We love to take discipleship classes. We enjoy hearing a good sermon. We go to conferences where we learn about Jesus. We attend Sunday school or some other class where we learn much about the truths that the Bible espouses. Unfortunately, that is often as far as it goes. Spiritually, we end up trying to live our lives and grow up into the image of Christ by only breathing in. Breathing in, however, is only half of the equation if we want to grow as a disciple.

If we only breathe in and never breathe out, we will never know Jesus the way that our soul longs to know Him. It’s amazing how many people have been studying the Bible for years but doing none of it. It’s vital to renew our minds through scripture, but we have to breathe out or we will die. If all we do is go to church, attend small group meetings, study our Bible, and pray, but it never overflows into real life, then we’re missing the point. Breathing in is meant to bring transformation to our lives and to be a tool of transformation in the lives of people around us. We must not only learn the truth, we must live it. Breathing out can take many forms, but it is always about putting the truth we know into action in order to love and serve people in the name of Jesus.

Prayer

Prayer, more than any other discipline, reveals what you really believe about you, what you really believe about God, and how much pride is in your life. When we don’t pray we are saying to God, “I’ve got it. I don’t need your help. I have other options that have a higher priority.” Additionally, prayer is not a means to manipulate God by using just the right words and phrases in order to get what we want. E. Stanley Jones once wrote, “Prayer is surrender – surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will.  If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I put the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore?  Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.” God wants us to pray because prayer expresses our trust in Him and in His will for our lives, and prayer is a means whereby that trust can increase. Through prayer, God allows us as finite beings to be involved in activities that are eternally important. Through prayer, God is glorified when He answers. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Prayer is the means whereby we abide in Christ. It is in prayer that we learn to recognize His voice when He speaks to us. Richard Foster wrote: “Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love.” It is in prayer that we find intimacy with Jesus and the strength and power we need to live the way of Jesus.

When one examines the life of Jesus, prayer wasn't just a teaching, but it was something that he was always doing. He was praying at his baptism. He went to the mountain and spent all night on the mountain praying before He chose the twelve. He prayed early in the morning. He prayed late into the evening. At the transfiguration, he was praying. He poured out His soul in prayer during the darkest time of his life in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was praying while He was hanging on the cross. He was constantly in communication with the Father. We clearly see that the way of Jesus was that prayer was not built around a specific time or place in life, but rather it was life. For Jesus, prayer was more than just a spiritual discipline, it was how He lived. If we want to be known as followers of Jesus, then without question we must be a prayerful people who place their trust in the wisdom and power of God. 

Worship

Everyone is a worshipper. We’ll either worship the Creator God, or we’ll worship created things. That’s why God said, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” He knows we’re a worshipping people, so He commands us to make sure our worship is focused on Him.

Louie Giglio wrote, “Worship is our response both personal and corporate to God for who He is and what He has done expressed in and by things we say and the way we live.” Worship is born in our hearts when we answer the question: Who is God and what has He done? When we take time to answer that question thoughtfully, then the only reasonable response to who He is and what He’s done is to give Him our lives as an act of worship. Paul said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” Hebrews 12:28-29 says, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’” Acceptable worship is surrendering my life to Him with reverence and awe, and allowing Him to consume my life for His purposes. He wants everything within us. He’s not looking for twenty minutes of songs; He wants my life. He doesn’t just want 10% of what He’s blessed me with financially; He wants my life. He doesn’t want 15 minutes a day to pray; He wants my life. Worship is our response to who God is and what He’s done. The only reasonable response for who He is and what He’s done is to offer my life as an act of worship. True worship will cost me everything. It is the daily act of laying down my life. It’s giving God all that is “me.” It is a constant call to crucify my will and pursue His. True worship means I allow myself to be broken and spilled out like the perfume in the alabaster jar (Matthew 26:6-13). Worship will cost me my self-centeredness. Worship is arranging my entire life around Jesus, His mission, and His community.

 

• Home
• About Us
  • Mission & Values
  • What We Believe
  • Our History
  • Our Pastoral Staff
    • Pastor Tim and Jen Allen
  • Photo Gallery
  • Members - Phone and E-Mail Directory
• Church Ministries
  • Jr. High & High School
    • Tribe Student Ministries
    • Student Missions
    • Student Outreach
  • Children
    • Nursery
    • Kids in Christ
    • Living Giants
    • HighPoint
  • Life Groups
  • Men
  • Women
    • Encouragement Sisters
    • Family Movie Night
    • Girls' Night Out
  • Sunday School
    • Children
    • Adult
  • Care & Compassion
    • Love in Action
    • Food Pantry
    • Prayer Partners
    • Jail Ministry
  • Hospitality Ministry
  • Community Small Group
• Missions
  • Missionaries We Support
  • U.S. Missions
  • World Missions
• Calendar of Events
• Location & Service Times
• Weekly Bulletin
• Daily Devotional
• Prayer and Praise
• Spiritual Help
  • How to Follow Christ
  • Search the Bible
• News & Information
• FAQ
• Contact Us
• VVCF Drama Team
  • Drama Team Easter Video
• Real Hope Fundraiser