About Us
* Our History
In May of 1999, a small group of believers gathered together to reflect and pray at a small suburban home in Needham on a street called High Rock. While their ages and backgrounds varied, their visions were unified: together, they believed God was showing them something new - that He could reach a new generation of believers and non-believers alike with a new kind of church. Words like community, seeker-sensitivity, and multi-ethnicity were discussed and named as key values for this group of believers; core convictions of their common calling.
By June, these believers, now numbering twenty, began meeting in the common room of a house in Cambridge, with seminarian Peter Sung preaching the first sermon. Later that summer, after establishing its first public meeting place at the YWCA in Central Square, the members decided on the name "Highrock" for their church, a reminder of the street where they first met to pray and dream.
The first Easter service provided the year's highlight, with over one hundred people in attendance and a dozen accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior. Following that exciting first year, Highrock found itself at a crossroads, with too few small groups and not enough active partners in ministry to adequately sustain it. This led to the hiring of Pastor Dave Swaim in July 2000 as Highrock's first senior pastor. Pastor Dave’s energy and experience were, and continue to be, gifts from God.
At the end of 2000, having outgrown the space at the YWCA, anticipating future growth, and desiring a more permanent location to serve, Highrock moved into a church in Davis Square. Soon after Highrock joined the Evangelical Covenant Church, an active, growing denomination of more than 800 churches. Five years later, with a solid core of committed members invested in the church, Highrock took a step of faith and purchased a church building in Arlington, its first permanent home.
In February of 2006 Highrock landed in Arlington and things changed forever. Highrock's membership exploded, as did our ability to reach out to the local and global community with the love of Christ. Highrockers began new and innovative ministries to reach out to the community of Arlington and we continued sending out missionaries overseas. Our desires to evangelize were further realized when Pastor Dave and Josh Throneburg, the young adult pastor at that time, were called to plant a new church in Brookline, MA.
And so in 2008 we begin the latest chapter in Highrock’s history. A group of almost 50 Highrockers has stepped out of Highrock in Arlington to plant Highrock in Brookline praying that the Word of God and the love of Christ will be extended to the community of Brookline and beyond.
* Our Calling
All churches share the common call from our great God to fulfill the Great commandment (Matthew 22:36-40) and Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). In addition, Scripture offers models for the role of the Church in Ephesians 4:11-16, Acts 2:42-47, 1 Corinthians, and throughout the whole Bible.
Beyond that general call, our Lord gives particular calls to churches and individuals to serve as certain parts of Christ's worldwide body, which He fills with His Spirit and through which He continues His work of serving, speaking, and suffering for the salvation of all creation. This document articulates the way Highrock's founders, leaders, and members sense God has called us to serve Him, each other, and His world.
* Our Vision
A committed community of individuals who fully belong to God and to one another, and are entering more fully into His salvation so that increasingly we follow Jesus in every area of life so that we use our gifts and opportunities to "be Jesus" to each other and our neighbors across the street and across the globe.
This will happen as we:
· Connect to God personally
Continually drawn by God's love, filled by God's Spirit, shaped by God's Word, and attentive to God's presence, we worship the living God with our hearts, minds, souls, and strength above all else and in all else. This includes practicing praise, prayer, obedience, sacraments, Sabbath, study, service, singing, silence, confession, celebration, fasting, feasting, forgiving, thanksgiving, and seeking God's presence, power, and purposes in every aspect of our lives.
· Connect to God's people
Most of God's promises are made not to individuals, but to the collective Christian community called the Church, and apply to all who belong to her. In our uniqueness that results from diverse ethnicities, experiences, preferences, and perspectives, we are reconciled in Christ's one body by a love that compels us to confront, confess, comfort, counsel, and celebrate each other in God's name so that we might all grow in Christlikeness and reflect Christ to a world that longs to see Him still alive among them. We cannot love God, follow Christ, or fully preach the Gospel if we do not love one another, including our enemies. The primary context for individual spiritual growth and Gospel proclamation is Christian community. Through shared laughter, tears, prayers, experiences, and mutual submission, our relationships will become environments in which mutual dignity is protected, truth is shared, and forgiveness is sought, extended and received, resulting in repentance and reconciliation as we enter into the battle for each other's souls against the power of sin and death.
· Connect to God's purposes
We continue God's work of creation and redemption of all creation in our worship, our work, and our relationships as we engage the world as servants of Christ, empowered, energized, and equipped even to suffer for the Gospel so that God's will "will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven," and in order to hasten the day when "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the Glory of God the Father." As the body of Christ, we want God to do through our body the very kinds of things He did through Christ's body as we imitate our Lord's passion for the least, the lost, the left out and the lonely. We have been created and called by God, and we want to use "whatever gifts we have received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms." We pray for and invite those who are estranged from our Savior and His Church to experience His Spirit alive in our community. Seeing our love for them and one another that transcends our differences and sins, they will get to taste of our Lord's own love, and long to enter into community, initially with us and ultimately with God Himself.
* Our Values
· Grace
God's grace is the sole basis of our creation salvation in Christ for sinners like us in this life and the next, leaving no room for shame, fear, boasting, or condemnation.
Ephesians 2:8 - For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith --- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God --- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
· Evangelism
We are compelled by Christ's compassion and commands to share the Good News about God's love for sinners, which is most clearly evident in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and His invitation to reconciliation and new life that is only available through Christ. We do this through word and deed in ways that are proactive, practical, personal, prayerful, relevant, and respectful, and long to reach those who are estranged from God and His body on earth, the Church.
2 Corinthians 5:18 - All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.
· Community
Though sin has isolated us, every individual is invited to be reconciled at once to God and to God's family on earth, which is the Church. God Himself is community: Father, Son, and Spirit, and we cannot have fellowship with, fully experience or reflect our Lord to the world unless we are in committed community with all who belong to Him. God saves us to and through Christian community.
John 13:34 - A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By all this men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
· Ministry
Just as Jesus was during the incarnation, so we are the body of Christ, sent by God to suffer passionately for the salvation of the world. God created and called each of us to join Him as He continues His work of creation and redemption through us. Salvation includes restoration to our true purpose, and our lives become meaningful as we serve according to the gifts God has given us. The church is not a corporation that ministers to the members, but members ministering to God and others, both in and out of the congregation, in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. By giving our lives in ministry that gives life to others, we will find true life ourselves.
Romans 12:4 - Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ's body. We are all parts of his body, and each of us has different works to do. And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others.
Ephesians 2:10 - For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
· Relevance
The task of local congregations in every age and every culture is to offer the unchanging Gospel in ways that are attractive, accessible, and allow people to respond to the whole truth of God's transforming love for sinners. Because culture is constantly changing, the Church must constantly contextualize God's Good News for the people they have been called to serve. For this reason, rather than looking for the "best" church model, we realize that all areas of our congregational life will have to be subject to reconsideration in order to continue reaching contemporary people with God's timeless truth. Therefore, we commit ourselves to careful but continual creativity, prayerful innovation, theological reflection, cultural sensitivity, and listening to God at each step.
1 Corinthians 9:19 - Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
* Our Logo
Our logo – combining an upwardly directed arrow, a house, and a starburst – is representative of the three core aspects of what we are all about: Transformation through connecting to God personally, connecting to God's people, and connecting to God's purposes. Through corporate worship, community involvement, and personally investing in the lives of one another, we at Highrock hope to be a real reflection of God's love to our community.
* Our Denomination
We are a proud member of the Evangelical Covenant Church which affirms:
- The centrality of the Scriptures
- The necessity of new birth
- A commitment to the whole mission of the church
- The Church as a fellowship of believers
- A conscious dependence on the ministry of the Holy Spirit
- The reality of freedom in Christ
