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Kevin DeYoung
With all our soul, and with our entire mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” Implicit in this statement is the belief that the church should have a positive relationship to humankind horizontally. We also share in the mission of His Son Jesus Christ, in “healing the sick, helping the blind to receive sight, the lame to walk, the leper to be cleansed, the deaf to hear, the dead to be raised, and the poor to have the Good News preached to them.” – Luke 4:18.
We actualize this mission by praising God, by being obedient to the demands of the Gospel, by telling the story of God’s gracious acts in creating and redeeming the world, by inviting persons to commit their lives to Jesus Christ, and by serving as ministers of God’s liberating and reconciling grace.
Along with its emphasis on ministry and social change here in the United States, the denomination has focused much of its attention and energies on outreach abroad. To date, the AME Zion Church has member churches on all continents except Australia. In West Africa, in particular, the denomination has set up numerous schools and clinics throughout Ghana and Nigeria. The Church also has facilities in Liberia, though some of its main structures have been destroyed by civil war.
Overseas missions are a crucial component of the AME Zion Church’s outreach, but the denomination believes in charity starting at home. That is why, over the years, several individual churches have implemented programs to help families to find low-income housing, jobs, financial planning assistance, health care and day care services. “Our concern is for the whole person,” says the bishop, the (retired former) senior bishop of the AME Zion Church. “We have a holistic approach and a holistic gospel. We don’t feel that we live in a kind of compartmentalized sense, but that life is a complete whole. So we have to be concerned about all of those amenities of life that help make up wholeness in an individual.”
The outward person is important, but the primary focus of the AME Zion Church remains spirituality and “sharing the good news of the gospel,” says the former senior bishop. As we, the AME Zion Church continues to expand and diversify its ministry, we also are preparing to lead an ever-increasing youthful church body into the next century.
Our Church exists to make, mature and multiply disciples of Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God.
We make disciples through sharing the good news of Jesus with our words and living out the implications of the good news of Jesus in our lives.
We mature disciples through growing in our understanding and application of the good news of Jesus to our lives.
We multiply disciples through spreading the glory of God in our local community while interacting with our neighbors, children, and businesses
to bring a strong faith presence to York PA.
7. Urban Imperative
We believe that if the church is going to have a strategic influence in our culture for the fame of Jesus, cities should be the focus of our missional efforts.
For us, that means that while we want to be part of gospel expansion wherever possible, we are most committed to seeing that happen in our city,
Philadelphia. We work out our love for our city by being committed to our local neighborhoods and we pray that God would use us to start other
neighborhood churches throughout Philadelphia.
8. Next Generation
We are committed to passing down our mission, vision and values to the next generation by engaging children and youth with age specific teaching,
modeling Christ centered lives and intentionally integrating them into the life of the church. You can find out more information about how we engage
the next generation by clicking on Christ Church Kids or Christ Kids Youth Group.