The commands of Jesus are unchanging and we must always strive to obey them. We have sought to summarise the commands of Jesus in our VALUES.

Some of these PRACTICES are about how we do things and must therefore be held lightly as they can change because they are more about making it as easy as possible for people to obey the commands of Jesus.

1. DEVOTION TO SCRIPTURE AND PRAYER

The greatest command is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Matthew 22:36-40), so this must be our greatest priority as a church. It is so easy to be distracted and begin to be lovers of other things so we make it a priority be devoted to the reading, study and meditation of God’s Word, the Bible. We want our people to develop a growing desire for the Scriptures and this requires each of us to be spending time with God daily.

In order to develop this we all read from the same Bible reading programme. When we are doing life together we expect that each person wants to build others up as each person shares from their personal time with God during the week. This will also be the greatest safeguard against heresy and false teaching when everyone has “searched the Scriptures day after day” (Acts 17:11).

Prayer is an integral part of spending time with God, where we worship and adore Him, ask for the well-being and growth of others, confess our sin to the Lord and tell God our needs. We want prayer to become so prominent in our lives that we remain in a constant place of prayer as we go about our daily life. We trust in God and we have faith that He will hear and answer our prayers and as a result, He is the first one we go to. When we see prayers being answered this will strengthen our love, faith and dependence on God and as a result we will be full of thankfulness and God’s supernatural peace will fill and guard our lives (Philippians 4:6-7).

2. HOMES ARE OUR HUB

There are at least 15 Love One Another’s in the New Testament. Clearly this is a top priority to God and Jesus told us why when he said in John 13:35 that loving one another would be the sign to the world of who we belong to (see also John 17:20-26). We want to make it as easy as possible for the church to be able to truly love each other so we will meet in homes. This means that everyone is able to live out, not just the “Love One Another” commands but the nearly 60 “One Another’s” of the New Testament because numbers in a church family will normally never exceed about 20 people.

Meeting in homes also means that we don’t have the huge expense of purchasing and maintaining property, buildings and equipment. Instead we can use what we already have, our homes, which allows us to grow without limits. Instead we are each able to give generously, sacrificially and more strategically for God’s mission locally, nationally and globally.

3. EVERYONE DISCIPLED AND DISCIPLE-MAKING

What has been long called the “Great Commission” (Matthew 28:18-20) calls every follower of Jesus to share the Gospel with those who may not yet know Jesus with the hope they may choose to become a follower also. Similarly, we are also all called to make disciples and this

means that we mutually agree to take responsibility for the spiritual care, growth and maturity of each other. This involves intentionally getting close to others so we know each other’s struggles, weaknesses and sin and inviting each other to speak life and healing into our lives. This might be encouragement or support when life is hard. It could be facilitating reconciliation when there is conflict. Perhaps it is correction when we begin to wander astray or even those hard conversations when sin is obvious. This can be messy and may be hard but this is what the New Testament pictures the church to be like, much like a family.

Pastors and Elders are not responsible for all the discipling. Instead, we will all disciple a few and then ensure this pattern is reproduced by these people discipling a few. A person who is brand new to faith in Christ will be actively engaged in evangelism and being trained to take responsibility for others. There is no room to hide in a small church. Mutual accountability and open and transparent living means that each of our lives are being pushed and prodded by others in a supportive, caring and gracious community of people who each have similar struggles in life.

Discipleship is life on life where we are around people a lot so we can observe each other and what’s going on in life. Discipleship is making an investment into the lives of others while others are investing into us. It’s God’s master plan for His church.

4. EVERYONE USING THEIR GIFTS

In 1 Corinthians 12:7 we are reminded that, “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.” This is followed by a list of many different gifts that the Holy Spirit gives for the benefit of the body. Just like every part of our bodies is needed, so every person and their gift is needed for the body to function properly. No gift or gifts are more important than others, so no recipients of these gifts are more important than other people. We want to make it possible for every believer to contribute in the life of the body by using the gift they have received.

While the pastors and elders have been called to a particular leadership role, all voices need to be heard and no one person should dominate. Pastors will take responsibility to lead and facilitate discussion and allow each to contribute and use their gift for the growth of all. A pastor will be on the lookout for gifts in people and give them opportunity to use them.

We affirm all the gifts of the Holy Spirit declared in Scripture for the building up of the body and will encourage their expression in and among the body so each person contributes to the growth and development of the whole.

5. REGULAR MULTIPLICATION OF CHURCHES

In order to maintain highly relational, discipleship focussed churches where everyone can contribute and use the spiritual gift they have been given and regularly share the gospel as they do life together, we will multiply to maintain a healthy and vibrant community of 10-20 people. This means we prioritise God’s mission over our own comfort or preference. To make this possible, each pastor is developing a pastor in training and each pastor will be deliberate about not making people dependant on them.

We will be evaluating constantly and aiming for regular multiplication but won’t force it. When another pastor is trained and numbers have increased sufficiently, the elders will initiate conversation with the pastors and church and prepare them to multiply. We are very clear that

we will not jeopardise the mission of God and the clear benefits of intimate church families for the comfort and ease that a larger family might allow.

6. SIMPLE GATHERINGS

We try to be very intentional that we aren’t drawing people in with anything other than Jesus. There is no impressive service. We don’t have any paid staff or attractive programs. The main thing you get in joining SALT is Jesus and belonging to the community of believers He has formed. If you don’t want Jesus and/or don’t want deep Jesus community then you won’t want to be in this church.

When things started getting out of control in Corinth, Paul reminded them of how he started the church. In 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 he states that he intentionally used “plain” and not “clever and persuasive“ words when starting and building the church there. He said, “I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God.” He then goes on to describe himself in chapter 3:10 as an “expert builder” as he went about building the church. Likewise, Jesus was unwilling to draw people with anything other than Himself. In John 6, people are coming after Jesus because He provided them with food. Jesus refuses to give them physical food anymore to make sure that only those who really want to follow Jesus will remain. We want to build church in the same way. This means stripping everything away to make sure people are being drawn by Jesus and His loving unified people.

Some Nuts and Bolts of Weekly and Prayer Gatherings

We want people to view each week’s Scripture readings as their sermon. We want to devote ourselves to thinking deeply on the inspired word of God – that is how we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching. We believe with conviction 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. 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 on occasions but they shouldn’t be the ones to speak for the majority of the time in our gatherings because if they do every single week there is only one person talking about the Bible. Instead the whole church must be talking about it so we can maintain 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.

By living in this way every person in the body is able to bring something to church gatherings. We want to 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. Singing, expressions of spiritual gifts, prayer and communion will all be regular features of our gatherings.

We want to have God direct the meeting through other people. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul talks about someone having a hymn, another a tongue, and another having a prophecy, and all these should be done in order in gatherings. Biblical gatherings have the element of different people participating and God speaking through different people. We want to create space for the Spirit to move, while not letting things get out of control or unhealthy.

The same principle applies in our times of corporate prayer. We want to see people come into prayer gatherings desiring to exalt God and see Him use them to build up and bless the body.

Sometimes leading prayer meetings looks like just saying, “let’s pray” and sitting and waiting on the Lord. Someone might bring up something, like a sin we need to confess. The role of the pastor is to affirm or redirect that. The leader should guide and direct, but not control. The church is not waiting for the pastor to discern what the Holy Spirit is saying or doing. Rather, everyone is discerning, looking to build up the body. Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16 that, “He (Christ) makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Our growth is connected to everyone working to build each other up. Since that is true, we believe it is important to focus on creating that sort of culture in our gatherings.

There is freedom for each church to decide how selective you need to be about having someone lead prayer or worship. Even if someone else is facilitating the time, the pastor is still there, guarding and providing spiritual oversight for the time. Therefore, if both pastors have to be gone one week, that church can join with another church, so that there is a pastor to provide spiritual oversight.

Children and Youth

Church is not a Sunday morning thing, and therefore we shouldn’t think of training and ministry mostly in terms of Sunday morning programs or gatherings. 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 is:

1. Parents who are discipled well, and

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 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 value the contribution of all so we seek to foster an intergenerational family with children, youth, young adults, parents and grandparents. 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.