Hope Philly exists to reach across Philadelphia with the good news of Jesus Christ by building shalomic community through discipleship and fellowship.
OUR CORE VALUES
GOSPEL CENTRALITY
The Gospel is the central teaching of Christianity; a lens through which all other elements must be understood through.
Say Tim Keller on this topic, “The gospel is the central element in the Christian life and continually renews the believer and the Church…Christian life is a process of renewing every dimension of our life—spiritual, psychological, corporate, social—by thinking, hoping, and living out the “lines” or ramifications of the gospel.”
Hope Philly is committed to becoming “in line” with the gospel in all of its thinking and practices
RADICAL HOSPITALITY
Hospitality is graciously offering time, space and resources to people who are in need of safety and refuge so as to offer them a respite from the chaos of life. If Grace is showing blessings and benefits that are normally reserved for friends and family, then gracious hospitality is showing hospitality to strangers and even enemies as if we are cities of refuge (Num 35:6-14) ie, a place where the rejected and who feel unworthy to participate in communion, community and/or find justice.
Jesus is the friend of sinners, therefore, the Church is to be friends with the outcast and sinners. We find our justice and justification in the gracious hospitality we find IN HIM.
WISDOM & MATURITY
Wisdom is taking the Christianity that has been taught to you and using it to navigate matters of real life in a way that blesses and drives flourishing for all parties involved. It is different from obedience in that it often involves synthesizing various Biblical principles and bringing them to bear on a situation at hand that there doesn’t seem to be clear rules or laws for.
Hope Philly is committed to being a place where wisdom and maturity can be nurtured and cultivated so as to help our members think Christianly about issues that are before them in their respective lives.
HEALING & RESTORATION
Trauma is one of the most common manifestations of sin in our world. We are committed to using the Gospel to heal people from their trauma and whatever other spiritual/internal ailments they may have.
Hope Philly is committed to building safe and hospitable spaces for people to find healing so that they may: grow in Spiritual maturity and glorify God by going back into the world and spread the Gospel along with doing the shalomic works that God has prepared in advance for us to do.
If Biblical Justice is redemptive and restorative, then healing people’s sin caused afflictions is not just charity, but justice, the kind of which makes a tangible argument for why Jesus, as opposed to our various idolatries, should be King over all.
BIBLICAL JUSTICE
For Presbyterians, any discussion on salvation begins with Justification. Whatever else salvation entails, a saved person IS a Justified person, ie one who because of Christ is no longer an object of wrath but rather is an object of mercy. The opening chapters of the letter of James insist that a justified person will always demonstrate their Justification through shalomic acts of justice. A person who says “shalom! Keep warm and well fed”, but will not help his neighbor with actual needs has questionable justification at best. Biblical Justice is taking what sin has made wrong, and making it right again. It comes from God who instead of condemning us, chose to send Jesus to take what was wrong with us (sin) and make that inner wrongness right again (justification).
Hope Philly is committed to using our Justified selves to do Biblical Justice, a justice that is rooted in the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of this world. One difference might be as follows: Worldly justice is mostly punitive and most often enforced via violence. But Biblical justice is redemptive/restorative and established by the sacrifice of the one who took divine violence on our behalf.
“In Essentials, Unity.In-Non Essentials, Liberty. In All Things Charity; Truth in Love”
Hope Philly is a church plant of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). Our faith commitments are captured well by: our Book of Order, The Westminster Standards, and what the EPC calls “The Essentials of our Faith”.