Our desire at Three Rivers is to be a missional church--a church which has at the very core of its being the drive to communicate and demonstrate the glory of God in the image of Christ to all people. Our Mission(1) Core Values help us to articulate and guide our unique role within the global Church in advancing God's kingdom cross-culturally.

TRCC Mission Core Values

1. Focused: Unreached People Groups

Three Rivers' passion, FOR GOD'S GLORY, is to answer the challenge to take the magnificent news of Jesus Christ to unreached people groups (UPGs), even in the face of risk. We, as the Apostle Paul wrote, "aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named." (Rom. 15:20) We call this frontier missions--going where the church is not established.

2. Strategic: Church Planting Movements

It has been said that the most effective form of evangelism is through church planting(2). Our goal, FOR GOD'S GLORY, is to establish self-sustaining, reproducible, church-planting churches full of radical followers of Jesus who are committed to engaging the culture by meeting both physical and spiritual needs. For the sole purpose of advancing the kingdom of God, these churches will adopt, develop, and implement effective strategies to launch Church Planting Movements (CPMs).

3. Dynamic: Going and Sending

God's mandate throughout Scripture gives every believer the opportunity and the responsibility to carry the good news of Jesus as the Savior to every people group on the face of the earth. This certainly does not mean that we think everyone is called to work overseas as a cross-cultural missionary. Some are specifically called by God to stay, be salt and light in their own culture, and join others in sending those who are called to be frontier missionaries. Both jobs are crucial and equally important. FOR GOD'S GLORY, we will endeavor to encourage and prepare people for the task - whether it's with the neighbor across the street or halfway around the world.

4. Long-Term: Committed to Seeing the Work Through

Many of the churches' methods today toward cross-cultural mission work are "shotgun" approaches--short term trips to a random country each year with no specific long term strategy or goal in mind. FOR GOD'S GLORY, we will, instead, commit to a strategy that focuses long-term on a specific UPG until a Church Planting Movement is launched and a self-sustaining, viable, indigenous church is established.

5. Synergistic: Strategic Partnerships

Synergy is defined as the working together of two or more things, people, or organizations, especially when the result is greater than the sum of their individual effects or capabilities(3) . With this approach, FOR GOD'S GLORY, we will pursue strategic partnerships with like-minded churches and organizations, and by using the life of Jesus as our example, we will seek to transform lives and holistically meet needs- both physically and spiritually.

For our purposes, mission narrowly defined is the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom of God cross-culturally to a people who have never heard.
C. Peter Wagner, Church Planting for a Greater Harvest (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1990, p. 11)