In the Summer of 2021, we began a journey to become a healthier and more faithful church. A global pandemic, stagnation, decline, shifting culture, and changing community dynamics takes its toll on a small church. The church leadership discerned that there was a need for significant change; and that if it didn't change, the church would likely cease to exist. Expedited by a pastoral transition, we got to work to discern what a healthy and faithful church looks like in our context. We shifted our mission, vision, and primary focus. We changed our name and how we presented ourselves to the community around us. We lived in the tension of being an "experimental" church, trying all kinds of things as we sought to actively learn who we are as a congregation and how to best serve our neighborhoods.

Over the course of three intense years we failed, learned, grew, shrunk, at times excelled, and everything in between. Through it all, we became healthier.

In the Summer of 2024, we felt the need to again begin the process of discerning how and where we were being called as a church. We were led in prayer to ask where the Holy Spirit wanted us to go from where we were at. This is when Flourish 2027 came into view, a three year vision to become a flourishing church. While we had gotten healthier, we felt the Spirit was leading us to flourish through intentional culture building, holistic spiritual formation, missional empowerment, kingdom generosity, and multiplication.

Embracing that flourishing meant to go beyond ourselves and to see heaven come to earth all over the Metro-Chicago area.

Embracing that flourishing means to say "Come, Holy Spirit" in all things and go where the Spirit moves.

Grow & Develop

When we talk about “growth,” it must mean more than just numbers – members, volunteers, attendance, or finances. True growth is about progressing toward maturity. As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:11–16, Christ equips His people so that the church may be built up “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature.” This maturity brings stability, resilience, discernment, love, and a community where every part contributes to the whole.

We must never stop maturing: deepening our discipleship, strengthening leadership, solidifying commitments, growing in community, and living out our mission with wisdom and unity. If we want to stand firm against cultural currents and flourish as the body of Christ, we must intentionally covenant together to grow into maturity.

Healthy & Vigorous

A flourishing church must also be healthy and vigorous in its apprenticeship to Jesus and in pursuing its mission. True health is wholeness—sound in body, mind, and spirit—and it requires intentional effort. We must guard the health of the church body, the health of our thinking and attitudes, and the health of our spiritual life. Healthy growth comes through healthy paths: discerning what strengthens us and avoiding what harms us. And while health leads to growth, it is not always painless. Like a broken bone being reset, pruning a plant, or the ache of exercise, pursuing health often involves discomfort that ultimately strengthens and makes us fruitful.

Jesus says in John 15 that fruitfulness depends on remaining connected to Him, the true vine. Flourishing comes from this connection and results in a vigorous, Spirit-empowered life that bears much fruit. Such vigor cannot be produced by our own strength, but by a deep dependence on prayer and the Holy Spirit. This kind of Spirit-led vitality will not only bless our church, but will overflow into our neighborhoods and throughout Metro-Chicago as we faithfully join the Spirit’s work.

Favorable Environment

A favorable environment is the set of conditions that help something thrive. Flourishing doesn’t happen by accident; it happens as a result of a favorable environment. Without understanding this we may see growth, but we will never know why it’s happening, or how to nurture it intentionally. For the church, that environment must be shaped around scriptural flourishing—making Christlike disciples, loving God and neighbor, bearing witness, and joining God’s kingdom work. To flourish, we must be convicted to intentionally create the kind of culture that bears this fruit.

Culture is the soil in which everything grows. As Peter Drucker says, “culture eats strategy for breakfast." Jesus’ Parable of the Sower makes this clear: the same sower, seed, and effort produce dramatically different results depending on the quality of the soil. Good soil—a healthy, intentional culture—is the key to flourishing. It must be cultivated with purpose and care so that what is planted can bear fruit thirty, sixty, and even a hundredfold.

Prayerful Spirit Dependency

Our initial posture is one of being Holy Spirit led. We expectantly pray and believe that God wants to bring heaven on earth to transform the world around us, and that He wants us to partner with Him in that transformation through our own transformation in rhythms of growth and repenting then believing.

Beloved Community

Our identity as followers of Jesus and collectively as a community needs to be grounded in the truth that God calls us beloved. It is a community which is grounded in belovedness that can love and extend grace as we have received it, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and make space for brokenness to be healed.

Incarnational Living

Just as “the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us," we practice hospitality by moving close to the people God calls us to love. This means being proximate to the people, place, or purpose we have been given a passion for, and taking the time to know people genuinely and not as projects. From that place of genuine relationship, we speak the hope of Jesus—helping others see God at work in their lives and sharing his heart for their transformation.

Missional Empowerment

We believe in the fullness of the priesthood of all believers, and are committed to forming followers of Jesus who can participate in bringing a sense of Heaven on Earth into their unique context. We believe in a high invitation, high challenge culture; that each level of leadership is open to those called to, gifted for, and willing and able to take on the responsibilities associated with the depth of leadership God is inviting them into.

Flourishing does not happen without intentional cultivation. Furthermore, it is critical to know and understand which fruit is intended to grow from that cultivation in order to actually see the vision come true. We have identified five elements that need to be present as we work out the vision that double as guiding "markers" for vision health.

Intentional Culture Building

Whether we realize it or not, we are building culture. Whether we realize it or not, we are always being formed by and forming culture. We must be intentional with our culture in our community in order to realize our mission and vision.

Holistic Spiritual Formation

We need to be making every effort to be formed into the likeness of Christ rather than allowing the world to form us. Our formation into Christ is for our whole lives – not just part of it. Less of us, more of Jesus.

Empowerment

The New Testament presents the whole body of Christ as the vision for the church body. Rather than the work of the church “trickling down from the top," the work of the church should always be “growing up from within." Every part of the body should be equipped and empowered to know and live into their gifting and calling.

Generosity

Looking at the early church, we see the radical generosity that they had for their brothers and sisters in Christ and their neighbors. This kingdom generosity is a mark of mature, Christ-like disciples. This kind of generosity does not happen naturally, but through re-ordering our lives under the lordship of Jesus. We are formed by Christ into a desire to break free from the tyranny that money, possessions, and our time has over our lives. A scripturally generous life is a joy-filled, simple, content, and free life.

Multiplication

When something is healthy, it multiplies. Any healthy fruit-bearing plant will bear fruit, and within that fruit, seeds are produced. Given the nutrients it needs, that plant scatters those seeds and multiplies. Our health and fruitfulness as a church should be no different – but it does not happen by accident. Every seed-bearing plant has some sort of delivery mechanism. So, as a part of our three-year vision we need to be a multiplying church outside of ourselves and out into the greater Chicago area, which calls for us to establish a seed-scattering mechanism.

Three Spirit-led Imaginations

Empowered Priesthood

The authors of Scripture imagine a community of believers who are a missionally empowered priesthood. They live into their gifting and calling to a people, place, or purpose that brings heaven to earth.

We imagine a church that doesn't create programs, but responds to the move of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. We partner with the Holy Spirit to participate in equipping and empowering them in launching missional initiatives and communities on mission to bring heaven on earth in our neighborhoods.

Everyone has a gifting & calling that the church needs to become mature and flourish. After all, there are no professional spectators when apprenticing under Jesus.

For The Sake Of Others

We do not want to exist for ourselves and our own gain, but for the sake of others.

When we look at the New Testament church we see their commitment to spiritual formation, maturation, and sending out from their community to support the work of the Gospel and to plant new churches.

We imagine becoming a place that not only sends our own as the Holy Spirit leads but to also receive, form, and send those who desire to see heaven on earth in Metro-Chicago.

We are formed for the sake of others, so we will send out for the sake of others. The mission is too important.

Heaven on Earth in Metro-Chicago

It was no mistake in the New Testament that large urban cities became epicenters for missional activity and gospel expansion. They are places of influence, and they contain incredible kingdom opportunities because of their diversity.

We imagine sowing a network of communities on mission, missional initiatives, churches, and nonprofits that are committed to see the Kingdom of Heaven come throughout Metro-Chicago.

We have this determined passion for Chicago because the Father has a determined will for Chicago. We love Chicago because Jesus loves Chicago. We want to see something new happen in Chicago because the Holy Spirit wants something new to happen in Chicago.