The mission of Phoenix Church of Austin is to serve as a conduit for irreligious people to meet Jesus and learn to follow Him.
We have three priorities:
1. A focus on people far from God
Austin is a great city. It’s a town that is somewhat unique with both a major University and the State Capitol. Austin’s famous slogan is “Keep Austin Weird.” Austinites love diversity, and value oddity. Austin is also a place that is ripe for a spiritual harvest. There are plenty of people that are far from God. Our dream is to find ways to reach the broken, the disillusioned, and the unbeliever. The statistics tell us that emerging generations are skeptical (at best) of church, so we want to design a church focused on reaching them. Having the unchurched as our focus drives how we worship, how and in what ways we preach/teach, and almost everything we do…
2. Creating Christ followers
The message of Jesus was pretty plain. He said, “Go and make disciples.” Barna and other pollsters have surveyed the church today and tell us that we are doing a pretty poor job in this arena. What is interesting is that most of emerging folks have also noticed a difference between who Jesus was and what his followers look like today. We have to get back to the simple truths of teaching people how to be like Christ. Our discipleship strategy is not new, but having this as one of our priorities helps us to measure ourselves with the proper standard. Are we seeing lives transformed from irreligious people to Christ followers?
3. Living as mission and on mission
Every believer is called to be on mission with God. We as believers have a responsibility of being salt and light in our communities and our world. Unfortunately, many churches and believers seem to live life with a self-centered focus. Phoenix wants to be a church that is filled with people living out God’s mission through service, and love to the Austin community and ultimately the world. The church is God’s hands and feet and voice…it’s time we built an army of servants on mission with him.