About C3
C3's Mission - "Connecting Our Community to Christ"
C3 is a non-denominational, Christian Church. As a Christian church, our starting point is Jesus. In Jesus' life, God has revealed himself as someone who has loved, served and given his best for us. Jesus lived, died and rose to reconcile us to God. Jesus was on a mission to connect people to God. We believe that Jesus’ followers should have a similar mission today.
At C3, we share a common mission with a lot of other churches who take the Bible seriously. Jesus told his followers to love God (Great Commandment) and to spread that message of that love (Great Commission). We feel a kinship and not a competition with other like-minded churches who share this mission.
C3's Unique Mission
What makes C3 unique is not so much the mission but rather how we go about it. At C3, we want to help everyone take their next step of faith in Christ. Taking a step of faith, however, can be intimidating for people. The leadership at C3 believes that we see a divinely inspired strategy in how God approached us in the person of Jesus. Jesus was God’s unique son, and yet he brought the message of the Gospel to people by approaching us on our level. Jesus met people right where they were, but he invited them on a journey that took them further than they imagined.
Meeting People Where They Are
Jesus came to us. He was born into this world without fanfare or splendor. A manger was his first crib. He was born into a poor family and learned to work with his hands. He was subject to the same frailties, disappointments and struggles we all face. When Jesus began his mission, it’s no surprise that he met people eye-to-eye in the spaces where they lived. He walked among the common people of his day and ate and drank with them. He was so down-to-earth that the religious people of his day accused him of being morally compromised. This didn’t stop Jesus, however, from engaging people at their point of hurt and healing them.
At C3 we want to meet people like Jesus did. This means that we try to make Sunday morning comfortable for anyone to attend. We want to create an extraordinary environment of grace, humility, warmth, attentiveness, and personal acceptance in which everyone feels welcome among us, everyone is treated as an equal, everyone matters, and everyone can safely consider their next step toward Christ with us, regardless of
background, beliefs or baggage. At C3 there’s a freedom to disagree, to be on the fence, to have doubts, to be skeptical, to not have everything figured out. And the vibe is not judgy, political or anti-science. There’s a freedom to be who you are, to be authentic, to be vulnerable, to be broken and loved anyway, without pretense or platitudes. We recognize that all of us need to take our next step and that each person’s next step may be unique depending on where he or she is in the journey. Our hope is that taking this approach to Sunday mornings will make it less awkward or weird to invite your unchurched friends to C3. When we communicate on Sunday, we strive to be understood so that nobody gets left behind. This may confuse long-time church people because they may not hear certain “church words” they are accustomed to, but that’s fair because those same words have been confusing new people for years. We believe at C3 that if we do a better job honoring the people God has brought into our community, then they are better equipped to draw their own conclusions about Jesus. So, no ambushes are lurking. We’re not big on manipulation or arm-twisting or closing some deal. We trust that God has everyone on a journey that he has mapped out for each one of us.
Going Further
Jesus called those who he met to join him on a journey. “Follow me” was Jesus’ most common way to invite the people around him to begin this journey of faith. As people began to follow Jesus, they incrementally began to understand that Jesus was no ordinary man. But this growth happened in steps. In fact, it was a few years into his ministry before Jesus asked his first followers (the disciples) “Who do you say that I am?” Answering that question didn’t exclusively begin that day. It was a question they were answering every day since they met him. As they progressively got closer to the truth about Jesus, the more their lives were radically transformed. Who Jesus was was a big shock to the religious people of Jesus’ day too. We have seen that same shock happen to church people here at C3. Sometimes we find that what we’ve always been taught, or what we’ve always heard, or what we’ve always thought doesn’t exactly square with the Scriptures. At C3 we dig deeply into the Bible to understand God’s message for us in its proper context. And we reflect deeply on how to apply the Bible to our next step in life. We’re so committed to trying to understand and apply the Bible that sometimes our own sacred cows get grilled. Others who have never been in church before, might be faced
with parts of the Bible that are challenging or confusing. As a faith community, we struggle to understand, recognizing that we may end up saying, “I just don’t get it,” or “I get it, but I’m not sure I like it.” C3 is a safe place to struggle. We believe that all these challenges are best faced with friends. C3 has a growth path that is designed to take people from Sunday morning into smaller groups where the questions and challenges of faith can be listened to, talked about and practically applied.
We think that we grow best when we do it in the context of relationship with others, in spaces where we know others and are known by others.
Connecting Our Community
“Connecting our community to Christ” is our mission at C3. Our community is both the internal community at C3 and the external community surrounding our church. To connect internally, C3 offers both Community Groups and C3 Service Teams. C3 Community Groups are small groups of individuals who meet regularly for connection, learning and to serve. Sometimes these groups are called small groups or home bible studies. Our C3 Men’s and Women’s also function as a place where people can connect, learn and serve. Community groups are a great place to belong. C3 Service Teams work behind the scenes to help run our Sunday morning services and to help us reach out to our community. It takes around 50 volunteers to execute everything that needs done on a Sunday morning. Everything that you see happening on Sunday: the help with parking, the greeting inside, the C3 Kids ministry, the graphics on the screens and the great worship music, all happens because of the help of dedicated volunteers. C3 Service Teams meet for service, training and connection. C3 Service Teams are a great place to find purpose.
C3 connects to our outside community in a number of ways. Throughout they year, we host several community outreach events. Some of these are annual events like, Soccer Camp, the Princess and Ladies Tea and Mudlympics. Other outreaches like our C3 Garden serve our local soup kitchen from the Spring to the Fall. We also encourage our members to connect with their community be being involved in other great local organizations that serve our area. God is a work all around us in our community and we love to see people getting involved in whatever way they are led.