To love and worship God, to be transformed as we grow in Christ, to make visible the Kingdom of God as we serve Atlanta and the world.

Areas of Strategic Focus:

The strategy is intended to guide staff, officers, and ministry teams as we seek to focus our ministry efforts to have the greatest impact.  Our hope is that decisions regarding programming and resource allocation will be made with these strategic focuses in mind.  By way of example, if we consider adding a new staff member, we should ask if the new position aligns with one of the strategic focuses. When planning special events or on-going programs, we should look for ways to leverage the event or programs to further our strategic objectives.  The adaptive challenge is the core question our session, teams, staff and each member should challenge themselves to creatively and persistently ask and live out.    

1) Holistic Discipleship – Spiritual Formation

Spiritual formation means the transformation of the entire person—mind, heart, body, and will—into the image of Jesus through worship, learning, serving our neighbor, and spiritual practices.   Our goal is to be growing disciples who have a deep understanding of who Christ is and how he has uniquely gifted us and called us to minister to others.  Thus, spiritual formation is holistic discipleship—the shaping of the whole person to think, change, flourish, and live redemptively in our world.

Adaptive Challenge: How do we practice discipleship in ways that invite God to continually transform the whole person?

2) Intentional Connection – Authentic Relationships

In the current climate of conflict and loneliness, there is an acute need for reconciliation, forgiveness, and meaningful relationships.  Thus, we desire to be people of peace and a church where all can belong, find acceptance as God’s image bearers, seek the justice of God’s Kingdom, and serve others.  Our welcome extends beyond the front door into every congregational activity and into our personal lives.  Building intentional community across all generations of church members is a priority, with increased focus given to college students, young adults, and any who may struggle to integrate into a faith community.

Adaptive Challenge:  How do we cultivate and practice authentic kinship within God’s diverse community?

3) Relational Outreach – Bridge-Building and Serving

Jesus told us that “neighbor” includes everyone we encounter, wherever we live, work, and play.  He calls us to engage, love, and serve our neighbors as ourselves, inviting them to join us in following him.  We seek to build healthy relationships as we carefully listen to each other’s needs, questions, desires, problems.  We will use our resources to partner with our community to address the physical, relational, and spiritual needs of our neighbors in Midtown, throughout the city, and in the world where we live.

Adaptive Challenge:  How do we incarnationally love our neighbors as ourselves?

Core Values

Radical Hospitality

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God."
–Romans 15:7

We want to invite, welcome, and include every single person who walks through our doors. Our hope is that no one could walk away from North Avenue without having felt the love of Jesus extended directly and personally to them. We always try to go the extra mile to make every visitor feel welcome and comfortable through personal, engaging, and loving encounters.

Radical hospitality is not just something our first-time visitors experience; instead, we hope this is a mind set of every member of the North Avenue family that permeates all of our interactions with family, friends, co-workers, and community.

Passionate Worship

"My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."
–Psalm 84:2

Our times of gathered worship are single-purposed in glorifying and praising our wonderful Savior. We hope that with worship that is heartfelt and unhindered, people can powerfully and personally connect to God. We try to lead consistently authentic worship that leads to encounters with God that result in radical life change.

We know that worship is not only our gathering together to praise God in song and preaching. It is actually everything we do! Every action is an opportunity to glorify and worship God. We may begin with passionate worship here on Sundays, but we carry that worship into our everyday lives, praising God in all we do.

Transformational Faith Development

"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
–Acts 2:42

At North Avenue, we want to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ; in a word, we want to be missional. We believe that it’s not enough to teach by simply conveying information. Transformative Faith Development is learning through discussion and accountability; through mutual trust and strong relationships; through honesty and openness in our dealings with God and with each other. Scripture is our foundation, and relationships with God and one another are our focus. We know that as we grow and mature as followers of Christ, our lives will be transformed in big ways!

Risk-Taking Mission and Service

"…I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."
-Matthew 25:40

We strive to make a positive impact on the world around us in order to glorify God. We recognize that God often calls His disciples to uncomfortably different and unknown environments and atmospheres in order to accomplish His will. Our hope is that we are often stretched outside of our comfort zone, challenged physically, mentally and spiritually to faithfully follow Christ. We want to be pushed beyond our routine church commitments and into places that we would never be if not for our desire to follow Christ. Wherever Christ is moving, we want to be there.

We hope that through obedient service both in our local and global communities, we may make Jesus known, especially to those who may not otherwise know Him.

Extravagant Generosity

"You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God."
-2 Corinthians 9:11