Our motive is based on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Salvation is found in no one else but Christ. Jesus is the true hope for the city of Atlanta and the people found throughout our beautiful and broken city. God is the one who restores broken relationships and broken systems. He is the one who reconciles us to himself through Jesus. He is the one who reconciles us to our neighbors and to others not like us, even while we have a propensity toward territorialism, tribalism, and parochialism. He is the one who renews. Jesus is the one who is “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5)…people, places, and things.
When God saves us, by his grace, he places us on mission. His grace is dynamic, not static. In other words, God’s grace moves us to accomplish good work. He empowers us for mission. What is God‟s mission? “This is the mission of God: to restore the creation and the life of humanity from the ravages of sin. The church‟s function in this story is to participate in God‟s mission; we are to be caught up in God‟s own work of restoration and healing. This defines the identity and role of the church.” (Michael Goheen, A Light to the Nations, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011, 19).
Our motive to form an alliance of church planting networks between different evangelical denominations and tribes is rooted in the unity Jesus accomplished for us through his life, death, and resurrection. Our job is to “maintain the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:2), and so we desire to live out of the unity we already have in Christ (see Ephesians 4:11-22). Jesus is the one who has called us to be on his mission, from different people groups, different churches, and yes…even different denominations. A church planting alliance, committed to blessing the city of Atlanta, together, is a beautiful and contemporary illustration of the one-ness Jesus prayed for in John 17:20-23. This is the kind of thing that pleases God. This is what we want to be about.
