This was the prayer Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6:10, and it is the dream that motivates everything we do. Terraforma Church has the dream to shape the world as God wants it to be. We believe that God has been working to make something of the world, and that His great desire is to partner with humanity toward this end. We dream about God’s Kingdom being established on earth as we disrupt injustice, cultivate community, and displace brokenness with beauty as we receive grace from Jesus and demonstrate selfless love to our world.
We want to create a thriving community that joins Jesus in bringing heaven to earth.
Our mission is to inspire, empower, and release people to partner with Jesus and build a better future for all.
The Jesus movement is centered on love, and love should set the tone for everything that happens in the church. The love of God flows to us through Christ, and overflows as we are bound one to another and then transformed to unleash love into the world. Love is our supreme value, which manifests in the individual as a self-giving choice to act responsibly with justice, integrity, courage and forgiveness.
We believe faith is beautiful and compelling. Terraforma is a welcoming and safe place for all, no matter where you are in your journey. We encourage you to invite your friends and neighbors. We are ready to host.
We believe God invites us to imagine a future where everything that is broken is made beautiful and everything corrupted is made whole. We are passionate about partnering with Jesus to restore people and places. We invite you to join a countercultural movement for the common good. Empowered by the Spirit, we desire to love and serve our community as good neighbors in life-giving and creative ways.
Everyone has a next step in their spiritual journey. Terraforma desires to meet people where they are and help them find their way toward Jesus, loving them along the way. The Church is a living community that supports and encourages everyone to take their next step in spiritual growth, all while recognizing and respecting where they currently are in their spiritual journey. Discipleship is the life-long process of growth where we discover our humanity in apprenticeship to Jesus.
People grow better together as they participate in authentic community. Terraforma is passionate about moving people from rows into circles. Faith forms family out of strangers and in this community we love, serve, and become our true selves.
There is no need to pretend, because there is no such thing as a perfect person. The Gospel is good news for all as Jesus invites us to become who we are in His sight. Terraforma champions God’s ideal, but we are at home in the middle of the mess.
Theology happens best in a posture of humility and wonder. Terraforma is a place for questions, discovery, and dialogue - not just boundaries and conclusions. For this reason, we strive to hold a generous orthodoxy that listens as well as it proclaims and learns as well as it instructs.
Whenever needed, we reject unhelpful binaries and look for a creative alternative to “this” or “that” thinking. Many difficult issues don’t conform to the constraints of limits and loopholes. This was the genius behind the teaching of Jesus and it should point the way for our practice as well.
Every movement has shared convictions at its
core, beliefs that shape ethos and guide behavior. We find ancient creeds
of the church particularly helpful in articulating the essence of orthodoxy
(especially the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed). These creeds
connect us with the long history of Christian faith. As a community, we
are concerned not only with what the creed meant in the early centuries but
also its ongoing importance and relevance for faith and practice today.
As we recognize the importance of such guiding
principles, we also recognize the diversity of beliefs on finer points of
doctrine held by followers of the Jesus Way throughout time. This means
we make space for disagreement in our community, and we take a posture of humility
and generosity as we dialogue. We are committed to making sure that
what matters most gets the greatest emphasis and preventing peripheral matters
from distracting and dividing our community. We value conversation above conclusions,
listening above lists, and dialogue over debate.
We approach theology as an ongoing conversation
with God, Scripture, each other, and historic perspectives as we seek to follow
Jesus authentically. Theology happens
best in humble dialogue, where questions are encouraged. When Jesus was
asked about the bottom line of correct belief, his summary came down to one
word: LOVE (Matthew 22:37-40). The Jesus
Way is the strong center of our movement and fuels our commitment to loving God
and loving people. Our shared love for Jesus can hold us together
despite our differences. On disputable matters, our approach is
conversational, inquisitive, and accepting (This is what Paul taught in Romans
14). This means we don’t all believe the exact same thing on every issue,
but we remain committed to the relationship. In other words, there is
room at the table for everyone who wants a seat.
We also recognize that the way we live, love,
and behave is far more important than the words we put on a webpage or a
statement of faith. So we invite you to experience our beliefs in action
as we live into the story God is writing in our community. We want to
exhibit and proclaim the Gospel in the world through our love and service - to
work for the common good.
We believe God inspired the human authors of Scripture by His Spirit to communicate His message of redemption and revelation. The Scriptures are the authoritative and trustworthy record of divine self-disclosure. We believe this collection of stories, songs, poems, letters, histories, and moral codes weave together to form a complete story from first creation to new creation. With the help of the Spirit, we seek to interpret, contextualize, and live out this story even today.
We believe in one eternal and perfect God, revealed in the three persons of the trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is perfect in love and is eager to be known and experienced by all, desiring both loyalty and love from all people. God has revealed himself as a loving Father that desires the best for His children.
We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, co-equal with the Father and the Spirit. Jesus entered the human story in the incarnation, becoming fully human and living a life without sin. His death on a cross was the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all people. He rose from the dead to demonstrate His power over sin and death and to reconcile all people to God and free them from the power of sin. We look forward to a future where he will consummate the building of His Kingdom.
We believe the Holy Spirit is co-equal with the Father and the Son. The Spirit is active and present in the world guiding, empowering, and correcting God’s children. The Holy Spirit enables people in their search for God, revealing truth, convicting sin, and transforming lives.
We believe that all people bear the Image of God and have inherent dignity and immense value, regardless of age, socio-economic status, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. People were created to have fellowship with God but became alienated in that relationship through sin. We believe that Jesus is reconciling people to God, to each other, and to all creation. We believe that the only answer to the problem of sin is redemption through faith in Jesus.
We believe that sin began and continues as willful rebellion against God and rejection of relationship with God. We believe that sin is the source of discord, corruption, and decay that effects all creation. Sin disrupts harmony with God and erodes all human relationships. Jesus came to give His followers abundant and overflowing life, and to rescue them from the power of sin as well as from sin’s penalty.
We believe the Church is the global gathering of Christ Followers, called to be hands and feet of Jesus in the world. Though it has multitudes of diverse expressions, the Church consists of all who have a relationship with Jesus. The primary purpose of the Church is to advance the Kingdom of God. The Church has a clear scriptural mandate to look beyond its own community to the neighborhood, the nation, and the world as a whole in a posture of love and service. Mission is not a program in the church but an essential identity of the Church. The Church is the missionary people of God sent into all of life to accomplish His purposes.
The Kingdom of God is any place or person where the rule and reign of Jesus Christ is expressed and experienced. We believe Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God in His bodily ministry on the earth and continues to establish it by the Spirit through the Church today. We live in between the inauguration and completion of The Kingdom. God’s Kingdom exists eternally in heaven and finds reflection on earth. As God’s children, we have been invited to envision and establish God’s Kingdom on the earth, building a better future for all. The consummation of the Kingdom will be fulfilled when Jesus returns. Although we believe in eternal life with God, we don’t focus on escaping to the afterlife. We see the reality of heaven as a motivating force to inspire us to actively build a better world here and now. This includes protecting and restoring the Earth and the value and dignity of life upon it.
