Our Vision Lived Out
Our vision is to become people of love through the work of Jesus Christ for the sake of others and the expansion of God’s Kingdom in Chicago and the world. We become these people through the intentional act of discipleship.
However, discipleship often devolves into an informational enterprise where we approach information as the primary means of our transformation. At Refuge, we believe human beings are much more than knowledge containers. Therefore, our approach to discipleship must be based on the type of people we’re becoming. And the metric for this is love.
To become people of love, we aim to build our lives on seven key values.
Immersing Ourselves in the Gospel
Grace is such a foreign concept to the human experience that we often revert to some kind of earned righteousness. Much like learning a language, the best way to learn grace is through immersion. We want the gospel of grace to not just be a tagline at the end of a sermon, but we want it to permeate our community.
Rehearsing our Union with Christ Habitually
The people we are becoming is dependent on our ability to tap into the transforming work of God’s Spirit whom we received by grace and whom we experience through our union with Christ.
Aiming Our Hearts Towards Communion with God
A trellis gives the structure for a vine to bear good fruit. Similarly, we believe the contemplative spiritual practices are a significant part of the structure that aims our hearts towards God. In other words, we want to make God a habit. We believe we don’t fall into holiness. Our habits show us what we love. We want to continually aim our hearts in God’s direction.
Resisting False Stories of the Good Life
Every day we are bombarded with stories of where the good life is found. In this way, we are being pushed in a direction or to put it another way we are being formed. Every day we are becoming more and more aware of what stories are being told and through acts of resistance we are embracing reality. The good life really truly is in the Kingdom and nowhere else.
Celebrating our Multicultural Kinship
We are a reflection of Chicago and a reflection of the Kingdom of God. We believe our multifaceted make-up shows off the beauty of God’s creativity, and the power of the gospel which brings different people together. This often requires the laying down of our rights, but we cherish the opportunity to become like Jesus in this way.
Orienting Our Lives Around the Things that Matter Most
Time is a limited asset. Often, it gets wasted in endless scrolling or mindless entertainment. We want to shift our attention to focus our lives on using our time wisely for our families' sake, for the sake of what God is doing in our lives, and for the sake of what God is doing in the world.
Giving Away Our Lives on Mission
Serving the needs of our community in word and deed through evangelism, justice, and mercy ministries is essential to us becoming people of love for the sake of others.
