We see our church, One Church as a Spirit-Filled, God Led, Christ-Centered church of Whosoever, impacting Midlothian, surrounding areas, and abroad through Worship, Family, Community, and sound Biblical Teaching.
We fulfill our mission through the following foundational principles: iWorship - One Church is passionate about obedience to the Holy Spirit and seeks to exemplify our love for God through our lives. (John 4:21-24)
iShare - One Church will share this great passion with others, beginning in our own homes, branching out to our communities, and reaching the nation and even the world with the message of God’s reconciling Love. (Psalm 96:3)
iDisciple - One Church is devoted to the process of each member as they are conformed to the image of Christ, beginning with men and fathers. (Matthew 28:19) iBalance - One Church is dedicated to building balanced lives through ministries that focus on a “total health” concept; Spiritual, Financial, Physical, Emotional, and Social. (Proverbs 11:1)
iFellowship - One Church is aggressive in building relationships individually as well as partnerships with the community and other organizations – all for the advancement of the Kingdom of God! (Romans 12:10)
“Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it.” —Dr. Robert Schuller
Construction takes time, planning, and execution. It’s a great delight to see an empty plot of land transform into a site where people will gather and lives will commune together. This same idea of construction is a picture of our lives as people being made righteous. As we are “Building Balance Lives of Worship”, it is important for us to ensure the building up of our lives in accordance with the blueprints given to us by God.
The foundation and structure of ONE Church are based on the unifying truth of Ephesians 4:4-6: There is ONE body and ONE spirit – just as you were called to ONE hope when you were called. ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism; ONE God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
5 Scales of Balance
To fully understand healthy balance we must pinpoint the issue that prevents us from becoming that fully conformed person God desires us to be. I believe our issue lies with two simple yet complex words; obedience and trust. Nobody would obey someone they didn’t trust and when we don’t trust someone, we sure won’t obey them – can you see the vicious cycle? But it is, indeed, our obedience that navigates our experience in our quest for total health, as we trust God to teach us the necessary principles, values, and concepts for holy living.
Depending on God forces us to believe that something can come out of nothing and frankly speaking, sometimes that’s just hard for us humans to do! In order for us to reach that level of total health, we must come to a “day of decision.” In II Samuel 12:20, after disgracing his kingdom and experiencing the death of his own child, David made the decision to literally get up off the ground and consciously bring his time of grief and mourning to an end. It was the same “day of decision” with Jehoshaphat in II Chronicles 10:12b when he heard his enemies were coming against him and he turned his heart toward heaven, crying out “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You”. We all have to come to that point, facing our own day of decision, and make up our minds that we are going to obey God’s Word and trust Him and Him alone for our spiritual, financial, physical, emotional, and social health.
To be Spiritually Healthy is to adopt the Bible as your basis for absolute truth; to understand why you believe what you believe; to be aware of the power of the Word and to strive to apply it to your life daily. Spiritual health also involves accountability; it means there are other mature Christians that you call on for sound advice and Biblical wisdom. (Ezra 7:10; II Timothy 2:15).
It involves responsibility; knowing you have a specific part to play in the work of the Kingdom.
Contrary to popular teachings of our day, Financial Health is not about getting rich or accumulating more. Financial health means you understand the Biblical principles of money and good stewardship and have adapted your life to them. It means you understand that the earth is the Lord’s – everything and everyone who dwells in it. Financial health allows you to be a distribution center rather than a storehouse. It provides for your today, your tomorrow, and even for generations of your family to come. For example, Luke 6:38, Acts 20:35, and Romans 12:8 all point to the fact that you have made financial decisions for the Kingdom of God. (Ecclesiastes 10:19; I Timothy 6:10)
Physical Health is just as vital to being balanced as a believer. There are many reasons we want to take care of ourselves but the most important one is; your body does not belong to you! God has been and will continue to speak to us about doing great things for the Kingdom but when we are not physically fit, we hinder the work — thinking that ‘word’ must have been for someone else. How would you like it if you loaned an item to a friend and when they returned it, it was warped, faded, scratched, worn, or otherwise damaged? Even unrecognizable? Well, this could very well be the way the Lord will feel toward us because we have not taken care of the bodies he loaned us during our time on earth! I’m just a firm believer that the Lord desires us to be fit so we can do more for the Kingdom and that this principle trickles down to other areas. A lack of physical health hinders your productivity in every area. I’m sure you know individuals who cannot live their lives to their full potential because of a simple lack of physical fitness. Finally, you want to be physically fit because it just looks good on you! Feeling good physically has an effect on you mentally – it’s a trickle-down effect. As you shed extra pounds and begin to see the wonderful results of your labor and discipline it not only looks good on you, it actually helps you to deal with out-of-control children, inappropriate in-laws, difficult co-workers, or even an insensitive spouse.
The fourth area that requires balance is Emotional Health. Although our issues may be identical to the world, as believers our solutions should not be the same. The difference in our solutions is that we resolve to trust God first – not as an afterthought or last resort. Drugs or alcohol are not the answers to our emotional needs, even if a doctor prescribes the drugs. Prozac cannot erase a history of acting out or overreacting; drinking alcohol will not help us deal with our grief any better; and eating uncontrollably will not make us feel more wanted and less lonely. For all believers, all the emotional support we need is found first and foremost in an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.
Last but not least area of required balance is Social Health. Being well socially has two faces; the first side of being socially healthy involves our relationships. We must learn to prioritize our relationships and distinguish those of the greatest importance from those that should come further down the list. Oftentimes we become locked in a relationship that redirects our attention away from those things that should be most important to us. For instance, outside of your relationship with God, the next most important relationship should be with your spouse. As a married individual, your spouse and the happiness of your spouse should be a top priority. For example, as men, we love our wives as Jesus Christ loves the church, which means laying our lives down, our pride down, our favorite pastimes down, and even the remote control down! We lay them all down just so the “good thing” in your life — your “favor from God” will feel and be her very best. Wives are to uphold their husbands in prayer. Not just for his sake but because you want to make sure he is hearing from the Lord concerning the decisions he makes for you and the household. After all, his decisions directly affect you! You want to pray for him so you can trust that he is obeying God and in turn, you are better able to be submissive. For singles, your most important relationship is with your God. Singles often say, “That’s easy for him to say because he’s got hips, lips, and fingertips to enjoy” or “That’s easy for her to say because she’s got big strong muscles beside her every night”. But if you ask any married person who lived a holy while single, they will tell you it was because of their commitment to a holy lifestyle they were able to live successfully and enter into a covenant that was recognized and honored before God.
Christians have a standard to uphold. Another aspect of social health is the right that we all have to participate in government; the right to vote and have a voice in our social systems. In this democracy that we live in we have been given the right to free speech and we need to utilize that right and begin to speak out against injustice in our schools, our cities, our states, and even in the federal government. Social health involves playing your part in society.
What is worship? If you asked ten people, you’d probably get ten different answers and most of them would probably be correct. Worship can be defined in various ways but I believe the most all-inclusive way to define it would be, worship is a lifestyle. It doesn’t hinge on a particular activity, mode of expression, physical posture, or time of day. Worship encompasses our entire lives; it’s how we live.
Of course, we’ll never be perfect. As believers, we’re in a lifelong process of being conformed to the image of perfection, which is Jesus Christ – and his ultimate sacrifice on the Cross for us is our buffer against all that would hinder us in that conforming process.
You could say being a balanced worshipper is simply living a balanced life and that’s exactly what we’re about at ONE Church – we’re dedicated to building balanced lives of worship.
When we examine the five areas that make up total Biblical health – spiritual, financial, physical, emotional, and social – all five take us out of our comfort zones and force us to depend on a God that we really don’t know. The evidence of that lack of intimacy with God lies in our church busyness, our bondage to financial debt, our diseased and overweight bodies, our self-indulgent, roller-coaster emotions and attitudes, and our difficulties in communicating with others. Ouch! Not knowing God intimately is painful!