What Really Matters

Hey, everybody! So I thought I would recap some of the main themes that we’ve hit in our lead-up to launch. Take a few minutes to remind yourself of the real reasons we’re doing this whole thing, and pray that God will continue to be all over it.  Here we go…

At Central, everybody gets in. And when we say, “everybody,” we mean EVERYBODY. It doesn’t matter how far we’ve fallen, how ugly our lives have gotten, or how self-involved we’ve been.  What matters is that we’re a community of people who are trying to learn what it means to be loved by God in spite of our mess. We won’t shrink from the truth of Scripture, because it’s our lifeline to finding God’s will in our lives, but we won’t use it to belittle anyone or negate in any way the all-sufficiency of the cross in our often-wrecked lives.

We will meet the needs before us. We know that we can’t fix all the wrongs in the world or even in our city, but we know that we have been called to do something about that which is before us.  God will continue to call us to make a tangible difference for hurting children and hungry people here in our own backyard and around the world.


We are not a club for Christians… We exist to help people find their way back to God. Anything and everything we do can find its purpose in helping people find Life the way Jesus experienced it. So, we don’t show up for church because we’re hoping for somebody to serve us. We come expecting to bless God and somebody else. We come ready to live openly and honestly before people who are trying just like we are to find and live the life of Jesus in our every day.  Sometimes we’re good at it. Lots of times we fail. But we will always be a church marked by grace, because that’s how Jesus lived, “full of grace and truth.”

We will be friendly at church and connect with others outside of Sunday morning. When we come to church, we won’t be always looking for our little groups of friends.  We’ll spend most of our time looking for someone new to get to know.  We’ll regularly invite perfect strangers out to lunch with us, because we know what it’s like to come to a new place and not know anybody. We want people to walk in and immediately feel at home.

We will sacrifice our time, energy, and money to see God’s vision for Central in Janesville come to pass. One of the best ways to get connected to other people and our church as a whole is to join a serving team.  It takes a whole huge group of people just to pull off what will happen on Sunday mornings, let alone all the ministry that will happen throughout the week. No matter where you are in your walk, there’s always a place where you can plug in and make a difference.