Blog #3 – The Core Values of Christianity – Overview

According to the New Testament, Christians are to be focused on ministry and to work in teams. There are three core values that must guide all the teachings of Christianity, and every member of a Christian ministry team needs to understand these core values:

• The first core value is faith that’s faithful to God. This is a faith that cares about serving God with a person’s whole mind, soul, spirit, and physical strength. It’s a faith that absolutely trusts and relies on God’s guidance. (This one core value is actually the source for the other two.)
• The second core value is caring, compassionate love for others, a love that looks for the needs of others and seeks to help resolve those needs. This caring love starts with the type of forgiveness that all Christians are commanded to always practice, forgiveness that rejects any form of personal retribution and turns the issue of retribution over to God as the only one who can do the job right. An important part of faith in God is trusting him to do this job. This caring love must also be characterized by unselfishness, generosity, and active involvement, not being afraid to get dirty or bloody in helping those in need.
• The third core value is confident hope in an eternal paradise that’s beautiful, exciting, busy, and filled with joy and love. This is a confident assurance that even the best eternity we could ever imagine falls far, far short of the reality: an eternity worth living for, worth suffering for, and even worth dying for.

Heaven cannot work as a paradise if the people who go there aren’t characterized by faith in God and love for each other. However, faith and love will not work as they should without a motivating vision, and God’s eternity is that motivating vision.

The flip side of saving faith is the worst news possible. When Jesus spoke of hell, he used the word Gehenna. Gehenna was a valley outside of Jerusalem where the city garbage was dumped. The dump was constantly smoldering, constantly burning, and gave off a terrible stench. This was Jesus’ way of telling people that if they didn’t accept faith and caring love as a way of life, God would have to send them to the garbage dump of eternity. And Jesus indicated that people who wind up in hell will be constantly tormented both by the environment and by regrets.

With these ministry goals in mind, and with the limited financial resources of New Century Ministries, I’m looking for volunteers to work on these goals. Any volunteer would need to begin by reading the 21st Century New Testament and demonstrating an understanding of at least these three core values of Christianity: faith that’s faithful to God, caring, compassionate love for others, and confident hope in God’s eternity. If you’d be interested in volunteering some time to help, please use the Contact form at www.NCM-21.com to share your interest and a little about yourself and why you’re interested.

New Century Ministries needs people who can help develop educational and devotional materials based on the 21st Century New Testament for Christian ministry teams and for Christian youth and children. We need people who can help with editing and processing to get these lessons published. We need people who can help develop audio and video resources to help the ministry teams function as they should. We need people who can provide administrative support to handle organization of activities, coordinate speaking engagements, and deal with human resources issues. And we need people who can help with coordination and guidance to work with the ministry teams. We need a team to maintain records of donations received and funds dispersed and develop plans for dealing with any donations and the profits from publications with an independent oversight team to assure that donations support the three core values of Christianity: faith that’s faithful to God, caring love for others, and confident hope in God’s eternity.

To accomplish its goals, this ministry needs a team of people, starting with volunteers, to help with the work. If you’d like to be part of that team, please go to www.NCM-21.com and send a message using the Contact form. You will have to read the 21st Century New Testament and understand these three core values of Christianity.