our vision We believe God is calling Dryden Full Gospel Church to be a vibrant community of believers where people can belong, grow in Jesus and engage the world with God’s love.
belong At the core of every person is a desire to experience belonging and family—a longing for the relationship and community that God created us to enjoy. God is inviting us to be in relationship with Him: to return to a life that is lived in communion with our Creator through faith in Jesus Christ. We are people shaped by this story: the story that there is a God who is real and who deeply loves us, his creation. Therefore, we feel as a church that we are called to embody God’s love by cultivating authentic, personal relationships with one another: our families, our communities, and our world. We want others to know that they belong to God and are loved by Him.
grow Just as the Christian Life means living in loving community, it also involves learning who we are as a people being redeemed through Christ’s work on the Cross. We view life as a journey of spiritual formation: as believers we are transformed through the deepening of character and maturity in Christ. Through Scripture, prayer, worship, forgiveness, ministry, witness and relationship God teaches us how to live in Him and for Him as his disciples and image-bearers in His world. We grow in Jesus.
engage As we love and learn we find ourselves entering into a new kind of life: whole life found in God. This means that Christ is revealed in both the extravagant and the mundane, for every dimension of our human reality is caught up in God’s great redemptive story for His creation. We are called to be sharing this new salvation kingdom life with others. To that end we seek to equip and empower each person for life purpose and God’s calling. We want to be active in our communities, being prepared to interact and transform our cultural context through a prayerful, personal presence. We desire to engage the world with God’s love; able to extend and express the missional movement of Christ’s Church by incarnating the Gospel in our community and world.
our purposes The purpose of Dryden Full Gospel Church is to foster whole faith in Jesus Christ: belonging, growing and engaging in God’s life and love. We do this by worshipping the Lord, fellowshipping as a relational community, embarking on spiritual formation, ministering through compassionate outreach, and extending God’s Kingdom through missional movement.
worship encountering God through worship and prayer The church is a people marked by loving adoration. Humanity was created to worship. We participate in that calling through music, the arts, prayer, scripture-reading, and the breaking of bread. We seek to be reshaped and renewed by the Spirit of the Lord through both congregational worship and personal individual devotion.
fellowship embracing one another in community The church is a people marked by relational community. We want people to experience belonging and family: laughing, loving, and living in company together. Our desire is for people to find support and healing for their hurts, discover acceptance and grace when mistakes are made, and share guidance and encouragement for walking in faith.
formation embodying Christ-like maturity The church is a people marked by obedient discipleship. We are journeying in a lifelong process of spiritual formation. It involves the deepening of faith through the inner transformation of our attitudes, hearts, minds and spirits; learning by the work of the Holy Spirit to become whole and mature disciples who are like Jesus.
ministry empowering people for Spirit-filled service The church is a people marked by compassionate outreach. We desire to call out identity and purpose in people, empowering them for personal life mission, and equipping them to serve the Lord through ministry to the community and the world.
mission extending God’s Kingdom through missional movement The church is a people marked by missional movement. We are called to bring Christ’s love and salvation to a broken and hurting world by being a blessing and a witness to Jesus wherever He sends us.
our values We hold the following core values in common. Think of them as the heart of who we are as a community of believers. We want to live as people who:
gather to worship the Living God deut. 6:4-5 Worship involves the whole of life and the offering of our own and our best unto God. In essence, all of who we are and what we do is worship. He alone is the focus of our worship and praise. We are called to worship him individually through our daily life, as well as in corporate gatherings. Our weekly worship service: welcome, prayer, music, Scripture reading, blessing—is an expression of exaltation of the Trinitarian God: Father, Son & Holy Spirit. Our worship is charismatic and participatory, and though we have a regular flow of service, we are not constrained to it and often welcome the Holy Spirit’s spontaneity in directing our worship time together.
know biblically-grounded teaching 2 tim. 3:16-17 Healthy spiritual formation involves the renewal of our hearts, minds, thoughts, behaviours and lives through the transformative work of Christ and abiding in relationship with Him. We are deeply committed to sound, thoughtful pastoral teaching and preaching of the Scriptures. We hold the Bible as God’s Word, authoritative, true, guiding us in right living, revealing the narrative of God’s redemptive plan for humanity—the story of God’s love and the hope we can have and live in him.
invite the presence of the Holy Spirit 1 cor. 12-14 As a pentecostal fellowship we affirm the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst through signs and wonders and the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit as enumerated in the New Testament. We exercise biblical spiritual giftings through the wisdom of the elders and pastors for the edification of the whole body of Christ. We regularly encourage prayer for healing and the miraculous, asking the Holy Spirit to be at work in, among and through us.
cultivate healing and relationships 1 pet. 2:9-10; 3:8 We value right relationships over organization. We feel that people are fundamentally relational, that we’re called to be living in communion with God and with one another. This is certainly not easy to live out! Ours is a society that readily depersonalizes people into consumers, resources or projects. God calls us to be fully, wholly, truly human; to learn who we are as God’s children, Christ’s bride, and the Spirit’s community. We attempt to discover and foster community by creating opportunities for relationships to develop and flourish, and where people can be honest, ask questions, admit doubts and find hope and life.
strive for church unity rom. 14:19, eph. 4:1-6 We value unity in Christ’s body. We hold that there should be unity in the essentials of our faith and respect and honour given when we hold a diversity of views on the non-essentials. In all things we need to be humble, discerning and loving in our interactions with one another, especially in situations of misunderstanding or conflict.
seek pastoral shepherding isa. 40:11, acts 20:28, 1 pet. 5:2 We believe the pastoral office is a unique vocation, one often misunderstood by secular culture and by the business-marketing models of some modern expressions of church governance. Though we recognize the day-to-day affairs of administration are a part of the role, we believe pastors aren’t called to be CEOs or entertainers for the people. The pastor is a shepherd, entrusted to lead people into maturity in the life of Christ: praying together, guiding people to see their lives as part of God’s story, sharing in pain and sorrows, helping to discern identity and purpose through community-building, and walking with the church family through life’s seasons.
foster apostolic leadership eph. 4:11-16, 1 pet. 2:13-17 Our identity comes from being part of an apostolic heritage. This simply means recognizing that the church is a continuation of the New Testament people of God. We value the fivefold ministry: apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors and teachers as valid and at work in the church. We seek to cultivate and foster the growth of these and other spiritual gifts so that the whole body of Christ can be the people of God they were intended to be. Trust, communication, accountability and servanthood are the marks of godly, effective leadership. Whatever our role, we are all called to be servants of God, and to act in humility and patience with our giftings and calling.
live kingdom-minded matt. 28:16-20 We affirm the biblical reality that the Kingdom of God has come to this earth, but will not yet be here in its fullness until the personal return of Christ. Jesus is the Lord of All of Life, and this impacts how we are to think and live every facet of our existence. As citizens and ambassadors we are called to bring Christ’s kingdom reality to bear on the brokenness of our world. In response to Jesus’ call to “go and make disciples” we have a missional focus which includes both local and international compassionate outreach.
care for families and the future gen. 1:26-28, prov 3:1, joel 1:3 Marriages, parenting and children are vital to the health of our church, society and world. The Lord cares deeply for the home, and we affirm the deep value and hard work of family life. We desire to encourage a multi-generational approach to Christian life and ministry: that families can thrive again, for our youth to remain committed disciples of Christ, for our parents to pass along blessing, identity and legacy to their children and for our elders to guide us in wisdom and example.
offer Christian education prov. 2, deut 6:6-7 We take seriously the role we have as parents and families to raise our children to be strong, grounded believers and disciples of Christ. We believe that Christian education can be tremendously valuable in the spiritual formation of the individual. Our desire is to provide a viable alternative to the public school system by offering a Christ-centred learning experience. Our curriculum integrates character formation, biblical wisdom and academic excellence. Our intention is not to remove children from the world but to better prepare them to engage with the world for the rest of their lives.