Our Mission
The mission of Newbern Alliance Church is to glorify God by proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ and make disciples of all nations.
The definition of disciple-making is relationally engaging with others to lead them to faith and maturity in Christ and equipping them to do likewise.
In the Garden
The church theme for 2025-2026 is “In the Garden.” It came about during my personal retreat in May of 2024, when I sought God’s help sorting out the ideas that had emerged during the Elders’ Retreat in March of 2024. After a few days of quiet contemplation in the idyllic garden setting of Cedar Springs Retreat Center, and having read Scott Cormode’s 2020 book The Innovative Church during this retreat, the phrase “In the Garden” came to mind.
“In the Garden” alludes to at least two imageries:
1. Adam in the Garden of Eden: created in God’s image, placed in the Garden of Eden with God’s command to work it and keep it, gifted with the earliest community with the creation of Eve, and yet vulnerable to temptation and fall. This image invites us to explore questions such as: What does it mean to be human created in God’s image? What are the mission and purpose of our lives? What does being created in God’s image imply for human sexuality, family, and community? Why are humans tempted to sin and what to do about that?
2. Jesus in the gardens in the Gospels: One was a place of Jesus’ agonizing prayer and the disciple’s failure and betrayal before His arrest. Another one was where the crucified Lord was buried, and later where Mary encountered the risen Christ, which speaks of God’s presence in the midst of grief and despair, and the sweet communion between the believer and the risen Lord. These garden images invite us to focus on Jesus, to identify and imitate him, especially when life is difficult, because in him we find hope and strength to face suffering, betrayal, and even death.
These ideas connected with some of the ideas that came up during the Elders’ retreat, namely, church unity, the life of discipleship, and missional actions. Human vocation encapsulates all three of these ideas, since humans are made for and called into relating in community, following the Lord, and serving God, and the ideal location of fulfilling these aspects of our vocation is “In the Garden.” Paradise lost will one day be regained. But even now we the church anticipate that ideal state by living into that calling to be God’s community, to imitate God and bear His image, and to participate in God’s work of creation and redemption in this fallen world, hopeful that He will make all things new, just as He has already made us new.
In addition, the ideas from the book The Innovative Church also connected with those ideas from the Elders’ retreat, with the book’s focus on renovating the church for a different time, helping people to engage in ancient practices of discipleship in fresh and relevant ways, and caring for people who God has entrusted to us by empathically listening to their longings and losses, and helping them to refute the big lies and create shared stories of hope based on the unchanging Gospel.
As a metaphor, “In the Garden” connects with the previous church theme, “Like a Tree Planted by Streams of Water”, and touches on a network of highly relevant topics for our people in today’s world.
The following is how I plan to cover the theme of “In the Garden” by using eight quarterly sub-themes:
1. Jan-Mar, 2025: Adam in the Garden: Human as Created in God’s Image
2. Apr-Jun, 2025: Adam in the Garden: God’s Gift of Sexuality and Community
3. Jul-Sep, 2025: Adam in the Garden: Humanness and God’s Vocation
4. Oct-Dec, 2025: Adam in the Garden: Temptation in Paradise
5. Jan-Mar, 2026: Jesus in the Garden: Praying with Jesus in His Agony
6. Apr-Jun, 2026: Jesus in the Garden: Standing with Jesus against the Betrayer
7. Jul-Sep, 2026: Jesus in the Garden: Mourning the Loss of Jesus at His Burial
8. Oct-Dec, 2026: Jesus in the Garden: Communing with Jesus at the Empty Tomb
— Marcus Tso, Senior Pastor