scripture

Welcome to this series on the values of Nativity Missions. A vision is a picture of our preferred future (making Church matter by influencing the world for Christ), a mission is what we exist to do, and values are the principles that are essential to our culture and our attitude. We're discussing some of the values that are key to our work. Today's value is

scripture

The Word of God has the power to change lives; it is living and active; it saves us, encourages us, teaches us, gives us life and much more. Nothing can replace studying scripture in the life of a disciple. God makes us promises in the Bible that give us an identity and hope, God gives us the law and commandments that give us direction and guidance. Through the scripture we learn who God is and what attributes he has, we read about Jesus, his saving work, and what he teaches us about the Father, and we see the working of the Holy Spirit and get to understand how she moves in our world. Reading, studying and memorizing scripture is an incomparable tool as we follow and strengthen our relationship with God.

This, perhaps, is a funny value for a church. It might seem to be pretty obvious... But we Catholics don't have a great history or reputation for reading and studying the Bible. We learned some stories as children but haven't, in many cases, been taught how to begin reading the Bible as adults. Nativity has some great resources (the weekend message, daily e-mails, the message guide) to help our community dive deeper into God's Word. Nativity Missions holds it as a value to place importance on scripture -- recognizing that it isn't necessarily a strength, we chose to make it a priority for our work.