“Hampton Roads Fellowship exists to display the character of God,
through the people of God, for the glory of God.”
That is our purpose statement as a church, and how we believe we are called and compelled by scripture to live as a group of Christians. At the end of 2022, we as elders prayed and thought about the areas God was calling our fellowship to focus on in 2023. And while many worthwhile ministries and opportunities came to mind, we felt HRF needed a distinct focus on three things: God’s Word, community and hospitality.
In Pastor Paul’s March 2023 post, we were reminded that God still works in and through our spiritual winters. As your pastors, we are confident that God remains with us, He is working in many unseen ways, and we are eager to enter a season of spring to see the fruit of this unseen, underground winter work of God. Through many conversations with you all, we believe God has indeed blessed us with strong roots. We see a church of God-centered, Christ-exalting and Gospel-driven believers, who love the Lord and desire to see the Holy Spirit work in and through this church.
We believe these roots prepare us well to have a particular focus on these three areas. A focus on God’s Word, community and hospitality will truly bless this body and enable us to display and share the gospel in great ways. These focuses make a church who is eager and expectant for God to work in all the ministries and opportunities that He provides us.
Above all, the only way we as a church can be faithful to these areas of focus is by depending and delighting entirely on Jesus. He is the living Word, who sought us when we were strangers (hospitality), and put us into a community that displays the manifold wisdom of God! He is the founder and perfecter of our faith. By finding our life and all in Jesus, we will be a church who considers others more significant than ourselves, loves our neighbors, and loves and glorifies our God.
As we expound on these areas of focus, we desire that you see them all through that lens of how Jesus is at the center of everything we do as a church. He is our hope, our life, our love, and our all. It is all about him.
We pray this vision would inspire you to depend and delight in Christ all the more as we see how God can work in and through this church. Please join us in exploring these three areas of focus in this series of HRF Journal posts.
By His grace,
HRF Elders