Core Values

  1. Giftedness: Some Christian leaders are gifted and called to be church planters. Mission Alive seeks God’s guidance to discover and nurture these church planters.
  2. Missional Planters: God desires that Christian leaders humbly enter into His on-going mission and submit to His will. Church planters will reflect God’s missional nature.
  3. Missional Churches: Churches planted must be composed of disciples who reflect the nature and purposes of God. Churches planted will reflect God’s missional nature.
  4. Community: Church planters must nurture God’s people to live in intimate community helping each other through the journey of life. Churches planted will be distinct communities of God on a pilgrimage through life helping each other to continue as Christ's disciples and encouraging others to join them on this journey to heaven.
  5. Dependence: Church planters must personally relate to God in prayer and meditation. They will take time for spiritual formation.
  6. Planter Care: Church planters should not work alone but within a network of support, encouragement, and equipping. Mission Alive provides care for church planters.
  7. Family Ministry: Husbands and wives (and their children) should minister together as a team to strengthen each other and the new church planting. The family will minister together according to their giftedness.
  8. Missionary Ministry: Church planters in North America should consider themselves missionaries who contextualize the gospel and forms of church to fit changing cultural environments. Church planters will relevantly communicate God’s eternal gospel in ever-changing cultural contexts.
  9. Responsive to Unbelievers. Evangelism is the lifeblood of the church. All Christians should be equipped to use their gifts to bring their relatives, friends, and acquaintances to Christ. Churches will grow primarily through evangelism rather than by transfer growth.
  10. Reproducing: Local churches must plant churches, who then plant other churches, thereby developing a church-planting movement. Churches planted will aim toward planting a daughter church in the fourth year of their existence.
  11. Multi-faceted Learning: Training of church planters is done not only formally (in the theology and strategy labs) but also informally (in apprenticeships and internships) in the context of ministry. Church planters will creatively develop models to formally and informally equip each Christian within their growing fellowships.