Cravings Part 1

We are finishing up today our look at the Core Values of Element Church. Hard to believe we only have one more week of Unplugged after today. I still feel so TOTALLY unprepared for what is about to happen. Almost seems surreal.

In March (06) Grant, Terri, Sabrina and myself sat down and started talking about this church plant thing. We had just "accepted" the call of God to come to Cheyenne. We didn't know anything about church planting, didn't know anything about Cheyenne and didn't know anything about the people we would be reaching but we knew something. People CRAVE things.

Not like I crave White Castle hamburgers or how my wife craves Mexican food. Not how I CRAVE coffee in the mornings or how we crave our favorite of moms home cooked meals. Cravings of the soul. We knew that deep down within every one of us were things, the SAME things, that we all crave. Why not start there with core values. Why not make the cravings of our soul the core values of our church?

We didn't even have a name for the church at that point. I still have the notebook from that March night when we started brainstorming core values and church names. We've wrestled over these values. We've tweaked them, changed the "names" of them and studied them. We came to the point of six core values.

Life - We all long to be ALIVE. We want to live. Not just physically, but we want to have REAL life. A life that matters. An abundant life.

Family - We all long to belong. We want to be a part of something bigger than us. From the earliest of ages we want to fit in, to be a part, to be accepted. There is a reason for peer pressure. We long to belong. There is a reason that young men/women call gangs their "family". It's a craving.

Change - We all long to be better than what we are. We want to be "good" people. No matter how bad or good a person is, deep down we want to be better than what we are. We want to change.

Worship - We all long to know something is out there that is bigger than me. Something or someone has this all figured out. Someone cares for me and knows me. I believe we all LONG to give ourselves to something/someone else.

Significance - We all long to be worth something. We desperately want a life with meaning, purpose and a sense of destiny. We all want our lives to mean something beyond the moment, beyond the day, in light of eternity.

Allegiance - We all long to be devoted to something. When we find a healthy sense of life, family, change, worship and significance, we find a proper placement of our allegiance.

Part 2 later today...

Jeff