Any person or organization that you encounter has values. Values are simply the reason “why you do what you do.” Unfortunately, too often, I encounter individuals who state certain values, yet their life and/or organization does not reflect that. To be honest with you, I have struggled in different seasons of my life where that has been true. My hope though, is that cannot be said of our church.
At Restoration Church, we have four core values: Intentionality. Sincerity. Locality. Multiplication. Our second value of sincerity is the focus of this post. The word itself is unique. It is not a word that I hear often, but there is a reason that we chose the word.
In the early stages of my Send Network Training, I was processing through our Vision Frame. When I came to the Values section, I quickly wrote AUTHENTIC as one of our values. It’s a great word, and hopefully a word that people live by. Lord willing, you would not be untruthful or fake towards other people. However, the more I prayed and thought about the word, the Holy Spirit revealed this to me:
“you can authentically be a jerk.”
I definitely do not want that to describe me or anyone in our church. As I searched for different words, albeit, still wanting to communicate authenticity, I came to the word sincere. Sincerity communicates truth and honesty, but it also communicates compassion.
When we say that we value SINCERITY, we are saying that we want to compassionately and authentically care for people. We believe that is what we see from Jesus as we read through the gospels. One account that comes to mind is Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4.
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.” John 4:16-18
Jesus Christ already knew this woman’s story. Unlike most of society, He didn’t walk away from her because of her story. The Messiah compassionately cared for this woman when no one else was.
As Christ followers, Restoration Church wants to do the same. We sincerely care for people regardless of background or current reality. We “love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).