About Us​

OUR PURPOSE​

Fulfill the Greatest Commandment and the Greatest Commission​

Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” and “Love one another as yourself”
Great Commission: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Statement of Beliefs

We believe the Bible is the inspired, authoritative, living, eternally reliable Word of God, equally in all parts, and without error in its original manuscript and our primary and authoritative source of revelation from God, superior to conscience and reason, though not contrary to reason. Therefore, the Bible is our final authority for faith and practice and is necessary for our daily lives as it continually points us toward the person of Jesus. [2 Timothy 3:16-17; 1 Peter 1:23-25; Hebrews 4:12]

  • We believe that the one true God exists eternally in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that these, being one God, are equal in deity, power, and glory. We believe that God not only created the world but also now upholds, sustains, governs, and providentially directs all that exists and that he will bring all things to their proper consummation in Christ Jesus to the glory of his name. We believe that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events, including the free choices of all moral agents, both angelic and human, that he hears and answers prayer, and that he saves from sin and death all who come to him through Jesus Christ (Isaiah 40-48; Psalm 104; Psalm 139; Matthew 10:29-31; 28:19; Acts 17:24-28; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 1:9-12; 4:4-6; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:1-3; Revelation 1:4-6).
  • We believe in God the Father, Creator of all things visible and invisible. [Colossians 1:15-16]
  • We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, who came into the world to reveal the Father and was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person. Jesus Christ was the Creator of everything, for by Him all things were made. We further believe that in Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form and that He was very-God and very-Man. [John 1:1-2, 14; 1 Timothy 3:16; Acts 7:37-38]
  • We believe in Jesus Christ’s pre-existence, incarnation, virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, substitutionary and atoning death, bodily resurrection, bodily ascension into heaven, exaltation, present rule at the right hand of God, coming personal return in power and great glory and everlasting Kingdom and dominion. [Acts 1:11; Acts 3:19-21; Daniel 7:14; Revelation 20:4]
  • We acknowledge His Lordship—that Jesus Christ is Lord over all things in heaven, on earth and under the earth. [Philippians 2:9-10]
  • We believe in the Holy Spirit, His present ministry, His indwelling, His empowering, His impartation of gifts for today and His transforming power in the lives of all believers. [1 Corinthians 12:4-11; Galatians 5:22-23; Ephesians 1:13-14]
  • We believe man was created by a direct and immediate act of God. [Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 2:4]
  • We believe man, by transgression, fell from the state of righteousness and holiness in which he was first created into total spiritual depravity, a state of death in trespasses and sins in which he is held as a slave of sin and an enemy of God. As such, he is unable to attain divine righteousness by his own efforts but must be redeemed and delivered by the power of the gospel. [Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4]
  • We believe repentance and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ are an integral part of God’s work of justification of the believer. Through faith in the shed blood of Christ, he or she is justified and made a partaker in the death of Christ. [Romans 5:1, 9]
  • We believe it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. [Ephesians 2:8-9]
  • We further believe the emphasis for a continuous walk in grace should be on demonstrating righteousness and purity of heart, believing in the keeping power of God, walking after the Spirit and not after the flesh, living a lifestyle that demonstrates the character, standards and convictions of Jesus Christ and not being conformed to the world. [Jude 24; Romans 8:25; Galatians 5:16-25; Romans 4:1-5; Romans 12:1-2]
  • We believe the Holy Spirit reveals and convicts people of sin, and we are responsible to repent of that sin and respond with obedience. [2 Corinthians 7:10; Psalm 51; Acts 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25; Romans 1:18-32; Matthew 9:12-13]
  • We believe that in the final judgment, which will accompany the return of Christ, every person will give an account to God of every aspect of this earthly life. Unbelievers will be separated from God for eternity in hell. Believers will experience the final resurrection and live eternally with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. [1 Corinthians 3:10-15; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:11-15]
  • We believe the Church is both universal and local. All who have been justified by God’s grace through faith alone in Christ alone form the Church, in unity with all believers throughout history. Yet the church is also local, with believers gathering in a committed community, submitted to the authority of Christ, and under the leadership of local elders. [Ephesians 1:22-23]
  • Scripture describes the Church as:
    • the Body of Christ [Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Ephesians 1:9-10; Ephesians 1:22-23]
    • the household of God [Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 3:26-4:7; Ephesians 2:11]
    • the temple of God [1 Corinthians 3:9-17; Ephesians 2:21-22; 1 Peter 2:4-10]
    • God’s chosen people [Romans 11:17; Galatians 4:28-31; Ephesians 2:19]
  • This language is intimate and reveals Jesus’ commitment to and care for His people. Furthermore, the Church is God’s instrument for revealing His purpose and the fullness of Jesus on earth for His glory. [Ephesians 3:10; Ephesians 1:23]
  • We believe in the Lord’s Supper and believer’s water baptism as acts of our obedience and a testimony of our faith. Though they are not a means of salvation, these ordinances confirm and nourish the believer when acted upon in faith within the local church. Both of these ordinances are only for believers in Jesus. [Matthew 3:6; Mark 16:16; 1 Corinthians 11:23-29, Matthew 28:18-20]

WHAT WE DO

Values

We want to be people who are devoted to worshiping Jesus. We want to carve out daily time for prayer and Bible reading. We make time to join with others to pray and study His Word. We regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper and can’t stop thanking Him for His mercy. These are not obligations we try to squeeze in, but cravings we can’t live without. We don’t require gifted communicators or musicians; we just love to worship Jesus even in the most basic settings.

The body of believers is supposed to be closer to us than our own families. “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Matt. 12:46-50 ( also Luke 14:26). Jesus said that “all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). He also prayed that his disciples would be so “perfectly one” that the world may believe that the Father sent Jesus (John 17:20-23).

Each member of Rhema Revelation should be fully trained for greater works of service. We believe that all believers are called to be disciple-makers. No one should come as a consumer, but all should come as servants. We want our leaders to teach us how to lead and help us develop in character through their modeling and teaching. Our goal is that each one of us becomes like Christ, and develops the ability to lead others to Him, make disciples, and plant churches.

The aim is to be people with supernatural character, focused on sharing the gospel with neighbors and coworkers. We want to be people who aren’t focused on survival or higher standards of living, but devoted to the mission. For some, this will mean going to foreign countries to share Christ where He has not been heard. For others, this means supporting those who have gone. For everyone, it means sharing the gospel regularly.

We should be people who are eagerly waiting for the return of Christ. We are willing and wanting to suffer because we believe in heavenly rewards. When you read the Scriptures it is undeniably clear that Christians are supposed to expect, lean into, and embrace suffering with joy. And this call – to willingly walk into suffering for the sake of the gospel – is a call for all believers, not just for leaders or missionaries serving in persecuted areas of the world.

Last, but not least, is the importance of loving and caring for the poor, as seen in scripture. Reading passages such as Galatians 2 and 1 John 3:16, emphasizes the need to show love through actions and not just words. Also in Matthew 25, we see Jesus separating the sheep from the goats based on their treatment of the poor. As believers, we need to follow the example of Jesus and actively care for those in need, both locally and globally.

Practices

We have structured Rhema Revelation to build a culture of people spending time with God every single day for themselves. Many Christians look to Sunday morning as the time where they will be “fed” by someone preaching a sermon, but we expect everyone in our church to read through the same portion of Scripture (we have a set reading plan) during the week each day. This is the primary place that they are “fed,” through spending time with God in His word and in prayer. Then, as we are doing life together, we can easily discuss the passages we are all reading. When we gather as a church, we have a discussion led by the pastor around what everyone read through the week. Instead of coming to consume, people have the expectation that they should be bringing insight from their personal time with the Lord throughout the week. This helps build a culture of people taking time in the word seriously and being devoted to the Scriptures.

In order to help us truly love each other, we’ve committed to having churches of 10-20 people meeting in a home. We’ve seen that once we get to 30 or 50 or 100 people in a church it becomes increasingly more difficult to live like a family, truly know each other, carry each other’s burdens, and build each other up. Many churches will do this in the form of a community group, which is great. But far too often people view a Sunday morning big gathering as the primary context of church, and the community group as optional. For us, we want to everyone to opt into sharing life, and therefore the primary context of church for them is a spiritual family of 10-20 people.

When things started getting out of control in Corinth, Paul reminded them of how he started the church. In 1 Corinthians 2 he states that he intentionally held back from using “eloquence,” “human wisdom,” and “wise and persuasive words” when starting and building the church. He didn’t want their walk with Jesus to be built on anything other than the power of the gospel. Likewise, Jesus was unwilling to draw people with anything other than Himself. Are we willing to do the same in our churches? Are we willing to strip everything away to make sure people are being drawn by Jesus and Jesus alone?

Everyone is called to make disciples. We are all called to share the gospel with non-believers in hopes that they would follow Jesus. We are all called to take responsibility for the spiritual care of other believers. But discipleship is hard and messy. It involves intentionally getting to know someone, having hard conversations when sin is evident, working through conflict, and spending extra time with them when life gets hard.

Paul said “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). He goes on to list many different types of gifts that the Spirit gives to believers for the sake of the body. Then, he explains how every part of the body is needed and that we must be careful not to develop a mindset that some gifts are more necessary than others. But is that truly how we function in the church? Does every single believer in a church realize that they are just as needed and important as anyone else in the church? Or do they tend to think that the preacher and worship leader are more important?

So many churches begin small, relational, and discipleship-focused, but aren’t able to maintain those characteristics as numeric growth happens. Before they know it, they have become more and more of a machine rather than a healthy family. Meeting in homes sounds great, but what happens as the church grows? How does a church adapt as the Lord adds to their number? One word: Multiplication. The true fruit of an apple tree isn’t apples, but rather more apple trees. The true fruit of a strong leader is not followers, but more strong leaders. The true fruit of a healthy church is not congregants, but more healthy churches. God has designed the world to be one that reproduces and multiplies.

Join Us On Every Saturday at 7:00 pm Eastern Time

Next Steps​

As you’ve been praying and seeking the Lord’s direction in your life, perhaps you’ve felt led to join us at Rhema Revelation. We want to make sure that it’s the right fit for you. Follow below the 3 step membership process.

1

Get Connected

Fill in the form and sign up, one of us will get in touch with you.

Sign up

2

Get involved

Then, during the first month as you’re gathering with us, understand the values and practices of Rhema Revelation and discuss with your pastors if you have any questions.

3

Grow

At Rhema Revelation, we are very familiar with and love the setting, where everyone shares what God has been teaching them. But we also want to be more intentional in creating spaces for deeper study and teaching the Word of God.

Frequently Asked Questions

The principle of simple gatherings translates into how gatherings are facilitated. We want to people to view that week’s Scripture as their sermon. In a traditional church, you get a sermon on Sunday, and then you get into small groups to discuss it. For us, we want to devote ourselves to thinking deeply not about the pastor’s words but the inspired word of God – that is how we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching. We don’t want to draw people to how we explain Scripture. Rather, we double down on the belief that if you have the Spirit of God in you, you are able to read Scripture yourself, and as a body we can wrestle with Scripture together.

Pastors don’t regularly preach a sermon in these gathering. If the pastor feels very strongly about a message that they want to bring to the church, they can teach for 5 to 10 minutes at points. Pastors shouldn’t be the ones to speak for the majority of the time in our gatherings. If they do, it subconsciously teaches people that they don’t have as much to offer. There is a place and time for sermons, but if every single week there is only one person talking about the Bible, instead of the whole church talking about it, we can lose the culture of everyone reading the Bible for themselves. The role of the pastor is to ask really good questions to get their church thinking through Scripture as well as teach throughout the discussion.

We really want to get the body involved in being able to bring something to church gatherings. Make sure each person in your church understands this: If you’ve spent time with the Lord all week, meditating on the Word, you should have something to offer that would be beneficial to the body.

Church is not a Sunday morning thing, and therefore we shouldn’t think of training and ministry mostly in terms of Sunday morning programs. Our children get to be in a community of believers who love each other deeply, live life together, support each other, and watch each other’s kids. It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. We believe the best thing for the discipleship of our children are 1) parents who are discipled well 2) the body of believers who will be the aunts and uncles in the Lord and will love them and model Christ to them in the normal rhythms of life.

Regarding how to incorporate children at your church in your gatherings, pastors have freedom to think through what would work best for your group. A church with a group of kids under 5 will look a lot different from a church that has only 2 teenagers. A guiding principle is that we want to value children. We don’t want to segment people out too much based on age. And we want the whole church to be interacting with each other. Where we can, we’d love to have kids engaged in gatherings. But more than anything, we want them to be engaged relationally. This might mean that when you spend time with other people in the church, discipling them or just sharing life, you have the children around you as well, so that there can be more space for different age groups to live life together and to love one another.

If you have further questions that aren’t answered above, you can contact us at info@rhemarevelation.org

Together, we will never feel lonely or lost.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter and stay on top of all of our events. You can opt-out at any point, just talk to us either online or in person.