Values

Sublime is affiliated with the Crosslink Christian Network and together we seek the following four core values which we aspire to and which we believe are like four unclimbed mountain summits of the Christian Church:

Holiness - love that embraces the sinner

Christians have certainly sought holiness. All too often that search only produced a form of Old Testament legalism that created Pharisees instead of followers and drove people away from God rather than drawing them to him. This continues to be the case to this day. What is most distressing the fact that it is so UN-like Jesus. Jesus was not this way. It was holiness in Jesus that caused him to love sinners and His holiness was what impacted sinners. So we must not measure holiness by internal or intra-church criteria (e.g. whether people smoke or not). To gauge our holiness we must reference the people in our communities and community spheres who are not part of a church. Our holiness will be defined by the way we love them, and the way they are attracted by our love.

Oneness - the relationship between the Father and the Son being modelled by the people of God to the community

As representatives of the triune God we must be representatives of the oneness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus said we would be known because of our oneness. The relationship between believers, without exception, is to reflect that relationship between the Father and the Son. It is not a scientific definition that the Word gives us. It is not a method. It is a reference point. It is not an event. It pays no homage to tight knit congregational groups or denominations.

Fullness - the full ministry of Jesus happening in the community

What we want to come to terms with are the words that speak about the church (e.g. in Ephesus) “…attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ…” We are destined to represent the full ministry of Christ – It refers to a greater outpouring of miracle power, indiscriminate love and unshakeable trust in God than was evidenced in the ministry of Jesus. It happens when apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers equip the saints so that they carry the responsibility for ministry. It happens when we speak the truth in love. It happens when every part is working in a strategic harmony. We have yet to see this and it is one of the non-negotiables of the church in a community or a community sphere. Once again it is not presented as a method or a particular kind of event or activity. It is represented as a character quality. It is the habitation of Jesus in the church.

Completion - preaching the gospel to every person

Paul the apostle was able to say that the gospel had been fully preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Romans 15). That represented twenty two of the nearly fifty Roman provinces. In Australia we have never achieved this in eight or nine generations of European settlement.
This is about completing the work that Jesus commanded, empowered and authorized us to do. Perhaps the reason it hasn’t happened is because the church has not been competent to deal with the enemy. It has not been holy, it has rarely been one and has not very competently represented Jesus Christ. What we fail to realize is that these three former spiritual values are weapons as much as they are adornment.

As soon as we take the great commission seriously we realize we need to have holy love that attracts sinners, we need to be one with our brothers and sisters in Christ and we need to have the authority to represent the power and grace of Jesus Christ and his ministry. While ever we settle for less we will not achieve the goal and then we have to manipulate the Word of God so that we can be comfortable in our disobedience.