St Thomas' Church Philadelphia

Our Core Values 

Our core values are the result of a lot of reflection about what makes our church distinctive. Every church is made up of a mix of ingredients from its people, history, context and cultures. All this comes together to become the things we value. Why we do what we do.

What are the base motivations and inspirations for how we live and act as a church, as a community of faith, calling others towards God? What values are key to us? Therefore, what do we want to replicate as we seek to further God’s kingdom, through words, works and wonders?

Our Core Values were put together over a process of 2 years by a sizeable group of leaders of St Thomas’ Philadelphia, King’s Centre and City:Base, both staff and voluntary, both working at the centre and ministering in the city in Missional Communities.

What is distinctive through all our Core Values?

At the heart of our values is an understanding that our journey with God and each other is all about Covenant and Kingdom.
 
Covenant is the theme in scripture that expresses God’s desire to call us into deep and loving relationship with Him and to partner with Him in transforming our society as we ourselves are transformed.
 
Kingdom is the rule and reign of God in His people, and increasingly in this world. We partner with Him to further His Kingdom in words, works and wonders as we overflow His great “power that is at work within us” (Eph 3:20) into the world around.
 
Our church believes that every Christian can learn to do what Jesus did on earth, and should take responsibility for growing to do so. We aim at all times to model Jesus’ approach to his followers which was low control, high accountability. The way we put our Core Values into practice should be by this process of low control (leaders don’t tell people what to do, but empower everyone to seek God for their own actions and call) and high accountability (people choose to submit to each other and share the decisions, joys and challenges in honest relationship).

What do we do now we’ve established our Core Values?

We aim to replicate them in most things we do! Core Values are like DNA - the common thread and building-blocks that make up how together we ‘seek first the kingdom’. Being aware of our values should shape our behaviour as a church—from the biggest to the smallest matters, confident that these values are biblically rooted. We should aim to copy these values and to measure what we already do against them.