Vision
Gather. Grow. Give.
What do we want our church to be about? What do we want Hillside to look like in the future? What are our goals? What is our vision? What is our purpose?
At Hillside, we have a leadership team comprised of pastors, elders, and laypeople. This team sat down together and went to work answering these questions. Our main focus was to stick true to the Word of God and make sure our vision was built on the solid foundation of Scripture.
Our hope was to make this vision as simple as possible – something everyone could easily understand and be able to share to others. What’s the point of having a vision if it’s too long to explain, too difficult to understand, too muddled that it could be taken out of context? And so everything we envisioned as our purpose and vision as a church was boiled down to three distinct words, which is now our new vision here at Hillside:
Gather.
“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread…” – Acts 20:7
As a church family, we gather together every week for worship, so we ask our members to come every week. Yes, things come up and you will not make it every Sunday, but we do our best to be here as often as we can to worship together, pray together, listen together, and catch up with our friends and meet new people.
The bottom line is this: Relationships cannot form if we don’t see each other on a regular basis.
Just imagine a church where we come together, worship together, study God’s Word together, and grow in our faith together with the desire to be equipped to do God’s work. In doing this, we fellowship with one another joyfully, building relationships authentically, holding each other accountable, and develop an unbreakable unity as we serve the Lord. We meet every week to give glory to the true and living God, to build a real, genuine sense of community in the presence of God while encouraging, challenging and lifting each other to new levels as we share life together.
Making the choice to show up to church is important and we make sure that when you come, as you did today, that we are prepared for you and that you love your experience here. We strive to make sure your initial experience has been nothing short of wonderful.
Grow.
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.” – 1 Peter 3:18
There should never be a point where our knowledge of God is “good enough.”
Growing in our faith and deepening our knowledge of God is expected on our Christian journeys. Every Christian begins this process of spiritual growth, with the intent to become spiritually mature. When we grow spiritually, we become more like Christ – our Savior, our example, our model. It is our desire for you to grow with us at Hillside and we provide many outlets to do so.
We want to grow and help others do the same in wisdom and maturity as we not only learn the truths in the Bible, but how to apply them to our lives. We challenge everyone to passionately, actively pursue full devotion to Christ and His church. We recognize it is imperative for believers to be engaged in a process that will help them to understand the Biblical truths essential to the Christian faith. We offer many exciting groups and classes to do just that.
We ask our church family to attend a Bible Study or mid-week meeting for the purpose of deepening faith and knowledge of Jesus. Our hope is to have everyone here at Hillside to not only have an amazing head knowledge of Jesus Christ, but a powerful heart knowledge that will change the lives of the community. We can only do this if we commit to growing without ceasing.
Give.
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” – 1 Peter 4:10
Giving is one of the kindest acts of service we can do. When Jesus came to earth, He came to give His life. So we see giving as an ultimate testament of being like Jesus.
We honestly believe giving to God and giving to others far exceeds giving to ourselves. Giving can be extended financially as it takes money to fulfill a vision and offer resources to those in need. However, giving is not always about money. Jesus met a person’s needs, and we strive to do the same with our actions. As the verse above says, we should use the gifts God has given us to serve those around us. You can give your time as well as these gifts and natural talents for His Kingdom. At Hillside, we believe in sowing out time, talents and money together is what the Bible commands us to do.
We would like every member of our church family to have at least one ministry in which they serve others and give back. We hope the love that we experience from Christ is so overwhelming that we in turn pass on that love to those around us. God has given each one of us unique skills and our goal is to help everyone find a ministry they will fall in love with. If you love what you do, you’re more likely to serve joyfully. If there’s a type of ministry at Hillside that is missing and you’re passionate about, let us know. We always want to encourage new ideas that match our church’s purpose!