Redwood Covenant Church - Who We Are

Our Mission

Our mission is to help sincere seekers and disenchanted disciples become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

Our Purpose

Jesus said several things to his disciples as he prepared to leave them with the Holy Spirit. He told them that as the Father had sent him he was now sending them. He told them to go and make disciples everywhere, teaching them to obey everything he had commanded. He had already told them that they were to love each other the same way he had loved them. He had also reiterated that loving God and loving our neighbors were essential parts of living as a Christian. Our purpose is to help each other live this way, loving God, loving our neighbors, loving one another, seeking and saving the lost and teaching each other then how to live loving and holy lives in Christ.

Put simply our purpose is to know and rely on God's love and goodness, to live God's love and goodness, and to bring God's love and goodness to everyone we can.

Our Beliefs

Redwood Covenant Church (RCC) is a part of the Evangelical Covenant Church. This denomination began as a revival movement within the state Lutheran Church of Sweden in the mid 1800s. We remain faithful to the vision of those earlier Christians who sought a personal relationship with Jesus as Lord and Savior, and found no other authority for the conduct of their lives than that which God's word has revealed in the scriptures.

RCC affirms that the Bible is the authoritative word of God for faith, practice, and doctrine. Our teaching is drawn from the Bible, both for its guidance in what to think and in what to do. Most importantly, the Scripture is our guide to developing and maintaining a relationship with the living God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

We believe that God loves every human being and wants every human being to be saved but that every human being must choose who they will serve, themselves or God.

We believe that every human being must be given the opportunity to choose Jesus and that Jesus is the "way, the truth and the life" and that no one will live with the Father except through Jesus.

We believe that we live in a war zone where the world, the flesh and the devil work against all that is good. We believe we overcome the darkness with light and that all Christians are called to not only live in love and light but to actively bring forward that love and light in every place and to everyone.

We believe and affirm the current ministry of the Holy Spirit who indwells and regenerates each believer at the moment of their confession of faith and continues to gift and fill God’s people for works of service in power and supernatural effectiveness.

We believe that Jesus will return at the appointed hour to bring an end to all evil and reign supreme establishing the Kingdom of God in power and justice and that all those who have trusted in Him will live and reign with Him.

Our Values

We value God's love and God's forgiveness first. Without the full assurance and experience of these gifts of God nothing else we might value or do will truly be right or work right.

God made human beings in his own image and gave his son to save them thus God values human beings above all. So we value people above programs and our ministries exist to help people inside and outside the church. We value community and teams and teamwork.

We are dependent upon prayer, both as a means of personal communion with God and an expression of guidance and power.

We value faith, risk taking, exploration, mistakes, flexibility, forgiveness, growing and excellence. We want to be and do what can't be and what can't be done without the Holy Spirit's help and power.

We value function over form and informality over formality. We believe in transparency, openness and honesty and believe people can and should communicate about everything including their differences.

We value the work and contributions of our sister churches in our own community and around the world. We believe together we all expressing God into the world.

We are not satisfied with the way things are. We want to see people and things get better, whether in ourselves, in our church, in our ministries, or in the world.

Our Philosophy of Ministry

We believe in the Priesthood of all believers. We believe that every follower of Jesus is given gifts by the Holy Spirit and can do ministry in the church and in the world. We don't believe that there is any limit to that ministry, that every person in Christ can teach, help, pray and pray for, lead, baptize, disciple, grow and help others grow.

We believe that people can grow in the use of their gifts and that the application of their gifts changes over time and is conditioned by their maturity, experience, natural abilities, personality, particular passions along with the time and energy they have available.

We believe people should minister in teams and do not support lone ranger ministry of any kind. We believe that a person can only minister effectively out of the reservoir of love and health they are experiencing in Jesus Christ. We seek to help all our people, all our ministers, grow in their spiritual maturity and their emotional maturity. This only comes as they grow in their knowledge and experience of God, themselves and each other.

We encourage all God's people to be involved in ministry and believe it is essential for spiritual health and growth. We encourage experimentation and believe mistakes or failures are, in reality, simply learning experiences that help us find our best expression of ministry at any given time.

We believe that in an increasingly divided world it is important for us to welcome people from different cultures and work to develop mutual understanding, appreciation and care across ethnic and cultural divisions.

God has helped us become a patient, thoughtful and safe congregation which has made it possible for us to be especially effective in reaching out to sincere seekers and disenchanted disciples. We want to help people ask questions, explore faith and belief and make decisions at their own rate. We want to restore disciples who have been betrayed, wounded or just worn out, restoring them to love, faith and hope.

We want our ministries to express God's love and goodness both in the church and in the world so we encourage our people to build ministries everywhere. We want our ministries to exalt God, to edify one another, to evangelize the lost and extend the kingdom into the world that the oppressed might be set free, the needy cared for, injustice brought to justice and righteousness established.