What should I expect when I visit FFBC?
Listen to Lead Pastor Marcus Allen discuss the culture you'll find on our campus as well as our "G.U.T.T. checks" which help us keep in Christ-like fellowship with one another. To hear more from Pastor Marcus about our culture at FFBC, check out one of our "Who Are We Faith Family?" sermons available here.
I think the best way to talk about what you can expect when you would come on our campus is to talk about our culture. And one of the things that we are striving to do at Faith Family is have a culture of grace, unity, truth, and trust. And we call that our "G.U.T.T. Check". So we are striving as a body of believers for those four things.
Number one, grace. We want to treat eachother with grace. We certainly want to treat other visitors and guests in our community with grace. That's the culture that we see coming out of one who has a relationship with Christ, because He has shown us grace. And instead of God's wrath, we have received his forgiveness.
Unity. Certainly, a body of believers commanded in scripture is to be unified under the banner of Christ is Lord. And so that should effect the way that we interact with one another. We should set our preferences aside, our wants, and our desires aside for the greater good of the kingdom. And we are striving to do that in grace. And so that's why those two are connected together.
And then we have truth.Certainly, we want to be honest with one another. That means we're going to challenge one another, we're going to encourage one another, we're going to use the Word of God in each other's life in discipling relationships. But again, always with grace, always with love and with mercy.
And then there's also trust. We believe that if we are being gracious to one another, that we are speaking the truth to one another, and that means we have to have a culture of trust. We're not going to gossip about everything that is being shared in one another's lives. When we say we're going to pray for one another, we expect people to be praying for one another.
So if that is the culture that we are striving for because of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives, then you can expect when you come to Faith Family to be greeted warmly and to be treated with grace yourself. And that doesn't matter your background. It doesn't matter where you are coming from. It doesn't matter your skin color or your socio-economic status. It doesn't matter what you know or what you don't know.
We want you to come and we want to point you to Jesus Christ. That is our goal. We want to disciple you. If you don't have a relationship with Christ, that's what we desire for you. If you do have a relatonship with Christ, then we want you to have a deeper relationship with him.
So a warm handshake, a smile, a welcome and being challenged, pointing you to Christ, pointing you to God because our worship should be focused on God, not us, not our church. I think that people will find that the culture are striving for, by God's grace, is the culture that they will experience when they come and visit.