Our Vision

Vision asks the question: What Do We Think God Wants Us To Become?

Our answer is that we see God calling us to be:

...a healing place, sent into the city to heal the hurts, meet the needs, and share God’s grace to a diverse urban population.
...a vital people where the Spirit of Jesus Christ is so alive that people are drawn to the love, joy and kindness of Christ.
...a family friendly fellowship that unites families in the midst of a world that would divide them.
...a healthy church that gives birth to new believers, develops the gifts in believers and spreads the Word of God.”

Our Mission

The Mission Statement is designed to answer the question: How do we become what we see God calling us to be? Our answer to that is…

The Sloan’s Lake Community Church exists to:

Draw in through need meeting outreach
Lift high through inspiring worship
Love deep through intimate fellowship
Build up through Bible based discipleship
Send out through gifted service

Our Core Values

Core Values answer the question: Who are we? We see ourselves as a people with the following values at the center of who we are.

1. Faith—We are a people whose faith is in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation.
2. Biblical— We value the Bible as the divinely inspired word of God, the foundation or our Christian teaching and the only complete guide for abundant living.
3. Inclusiveness—We are a church that values and accepts all people.
4. Discipleship—We challenge and encourage all people to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.
5. Prayer—We believe that an intimate relationship with God requires honest, ongoing, communication with God. Through such prayer we gain God’s wisdom and strength.
6. Spiritual gifts/ministry—We expect all Christians to discover and use their spiritual gifts.
7. Worship—We value an authentic, passionate, spirit-led worship through praise and celebration with others that leads us into the presence of God.
8. Family—We are a church that values families of all shapes and sizes.
9. Fellowship—We believe it is imperative that Christians develop genuine, supportive friendships with loving concern for one another.
10. Evangelism—We are committed to establishing relationships with those who do not yet know Christ so that we might share with them the unconditional love and saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Our Affiliation

Sloan’s Lake Community Church is voluntarily affiliated with a movement of Christians known as the Church of God with General Agencies in Anderson, Indiana. In 1881 at Beaver Dam, Indiana, Daniel Sidney Warner with four others withdrew from a fellowship of Christians and later called their new association the Church of God.

They identified themselves as a Reformation Movement and did not see themselves as a denomination. The Movement had much in common with evangelical protestant and holiness groups of that day. The distinguishing features of this new Reformation Movement came to be a strong emphasis on the holy life of the believer and Christian unity. Formal church membership was rejected. The emphasis was on being born into the family of God. The movement spread primarily through the publication called the “Gospel Trumpet” and through the itinerant preachers. At the turn of the 20th century, the Trumpet Family moved their operations to a farm east of Anderson, Indiana. There the movement prospered. In 1906 they built a large facility that housed the workers and the operations of the publishing work. Eventually a Bible Training School was added there, dedicated to training pastors and evangelists for the movement. The Trumpet Home eventually became Anderson University. Today there are six affiliated universities. The Church of God movement holds the firm conviction that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. In this context we accept all that is central and enduring in the faith of historic, orthodox Christianity as these essentials often have been stated in widely accepted faith affirmations.

In declaring our present understandings of Christian faith, experience, discipline, and fellowship, we gratefully acknowledge our particular indebtedness to the Protestant Reformation, to the Anabaptist free-church tradition, to the Puritan-Pietism movements, to Armenian-Wesleyan evangelicalism, and to the Holiness movement in the United States. The Church of God believes in a cluster of biblical teachings which form a vision of the church.

Specifically:

• God’s church is the community of redeemed persons.
• God’s church is a community of divine-human partnership with Christ as Head.
• God’s church is a holy community.
• God’s church is intended to be a unified community.

The Church of God believes that God calls his people to mission. All Christians are mandated to bear witness to God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ and to "make disciples of all nations. The Church of God believes in the principle of openness to all affirmations of the Christian faith which are expressions of the biblical revelation. The intended unity among Christians is not based on the achievement of full agreement on all theological questions. Rather, it is based on a common membership in the church through the grace of God and is anchored by a common commitment to the centrality of Christ and the authority of the Word of God."

Copyright 2002, Church of God Ministries