Values Relating to the Larger Christian Movement and World Outside
Bethlehem adopted these values in 1995 as a part of its mission and vision:
- Sustaining ministries of word and deed to the destitute and homeless.
- Personally and corporately striving toward reconciling inter-racial relationships.
- Engaging in continuous evangelism through our natural web of relationships.
- Empowering lay people to be salt and light at all levels of society.
- Equipping "incubators" to support the "newborns" that God brings forth.
- Aggressively participating in completing the global task of reaching unreached peoples.
- Upholding priority in prayer, personnel, and funding for our adopted people group, the Maninka of Guinea, West Africa, and others the Lord leads us to adopt.
- Pursuing continued growth in the number of people who find joy and strength through membership.
- Mentoring future vocational ministers and missionaries.
- Cultivating a ministry mindset of creativity, flexibility, and responsiveness to new needs.
- Relentlessly dreaming of ways to penetrate our urban area with the beautiful truth of Christ.
- Expressing the value of Christians living in suburban and urban neighborhoods and the mutual enrichment and assistance of those Christians in one church.
- Applying field mission strategies to reaching people groups nearby.
- Pursuing a wartime mindset relating to the holocaust of perishing people and the use of our resources.
- Developing careful, clear, fair biblical thinking about contemporary culture.
- Engaging in bold, balanced, winsome confrontation of our culture's clearly unbiblical elements.
- Upholding a strong commitment to a diverse and balanced pro-life engagement with our culture.
- Serving and being enriched by the wider movements of God's Spirit across church and cultural lines.
- Sharing pastoral staff with the wider movement through their writing and speaking.
- Sustaining our support, fellowship, and influence in the Baptist General Conference.