Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before You.
Psalm 89:14 (NASB)
Jesus commands us to love God by loving others, and loving others requires working for justice – seeking wholeness in our world for the flourishing of all creation.
Out of God's understanding of righteousness, mercy, and justice, we draw a brief definition of Biblical justice:
Biblical justice is the work of making individuals, communities, and our world whole, by supporting goodness and impartiality in efforts that reflect God’s original intention for all of creation to flourish.
Our pursuit of wholeness means looking at the many different ways
brokenness manifests in our world. Below you'll find a message that
explains our approach to biblical justice, as well as resources with
more information about ways we're individually and collectively working
to achieve it and how you can get involved.
Message
Justice
Exodus 23:9, Psalm 33:5, Psalm 89:14, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Matthew 5:23-24, Philippians 2:3-4
Daniel Knutson • January 16, 2022
Worlds We Create: Our words are powerful. Just as God spoke and the world was created, our words create the world around us, affecting relationships and our environment. As we start this New Year, we seek to understand powerful words in scripture that we are called on to live by to create a more Kingdom-minded world. In the final week of our series, we're looking at how one word can create opposing worlds.
Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
– Isaiah 1:17
Throughout the Bible we see a calling as followers of Jesus to pursue justice (Micah 6:8, Amos 5:24). In our society, the immediate response we often see to injustice is the asking of, “what do we need to do to fix this?” But at the other end of injustice are real people with faces and stories – there’s rarely a quick solution.
That’s why we’re committed to partnering with local and global organizations that are committed to addressing the injustice we see in our world through systemic change and care-filled relationships with the people they work to serve.
Our Approach
While we believe Jesus calls us individually to pursue the passions He’s laid on our hearts, we’ve chosen as a church to collectively focus in on issues surrounding vulnerable children and families and the organizations that support them. The groups you see highlighted below under Local & Global Initiatives are organizations that we have deep trust in and relationship with. We encourage you to explore opportunities to get even more connected with their efforts.
Financially, we’ve committed to take 10% of every dollar that comes in through our General Fund and commit it to our missions efforts. We then take an additional 1% of every dollar and commit that toward our benevolence efforts, allowing us to meet immediate needs facing our congregation and neighbors when bills become tight and emergencies arise. Even though we’re committed to give away the 11% outlined here, our annual giving usually exceeds that amount.
Our missions efforts are overseen by a committee of individuals from our staff and congregation that meets monthly to discuss what our partners are doing, evaluate ongoing financial support, and to provide encouragement and insight to our partners as they work to serve the Kingdom.
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
– Ephesians 4:1-6
We are committed to empowering those affected by the forces of racial injustice and pressing into this issue in ways that God will use to transform our hearts and the people we encounter. No matter what ethnicity you are, we hope the resources below can help to foster new ideas and conversations as we lock arms to make a difference in our community.