When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was he said to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yours. We believe that's the core of discipleship. We also believe that a church of true disciples is the vehicle of God for redeeming his creation.

So when we say that our vision is to create fully transformed disciples who transform the community of Modesto we mean that we envision a church that loves God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength and that loves her community as herself.

It's important to us that we remain willing to innovate in our methods for reaching people while clinging tightly to the practices that made the ancient church so impactful. One of these key features was the willingness to show up to God and to church authentically. Authenticity is one of the key features of The Well that allows us to be impacted by Christ and to impact each other in meaningful ways. But it's also important that we don't keep that inside our four walls. We are being changed by Jesus in our church, in our small groups, in our events, and in partnership with other incredible organizations doing bigger things than we could do on our own.

In order for our hearts to change we must be deeply committed to one another. Good arguments rarely change minds, but hearing people's stories changes lives.
For this our pastors remain committed to regularly meeting with people in the church while the church itself meets in small groups.

We also host quarterly prayer meetings. If you're used to church events that give you a lot of incentive to show up, this isn't it. Our prayer meetings are simple. We show up and we pray for an hour. We believe that nothing has the ability to change the heart quite like prayer, so we meet quarterly to pray. Each time a pastor will lead the prayers in a meaningful direction.

Each Sunday service concludes with prayer partners at the front by the stage. We know that the end of a service is often a moment where the Holy Spirit has been doing meaningful work and we believe that prayer is a way we can steward those moments back to God.

The soul isn't a part of you, it is you. To refer to your soul is to refer to the whole of what it is that makes you, you.
For someone to truly get to know the core of who you are is for you to share your story, the real story. There are a few people in your life who truly know your story, often those are the people who are in your circle of influence. We call this your oikos. No, not the yogurt. It's actually the Greek word for household, but it goes so much further than what we consider a household in North America. It truly is your circle of influence. But we believe that your oikos isn't there by mistake, they're actually the 8 to 15 people who Jesus has strategically placed in your life for you to share the gospel with them. So, in our small groups we take a moment each week to share how God's story has intersected with ours as a way to practice sharing our faith with others. Sharing our faith is often just sharing our story.

So, most everything we do at The Well is based on oikos. Our events, our preaching, our small groups are all opportunities for you to invite your oikos to meet Jesus. 

The early church didn't have the Bible written down like we do, so to know it they memorized it when someone else read it to them. We take for granted how much access we have to the Bible. But, if we were to memorize the Bible the way the early church did then we believe our minds would learn to love God in a whole new way. This is why we do one memory verse every quarter. It means that we are still focused on memorizing Scripture, while doing it slowly enough that everyone can be involved.

People are hungry for truth. For something that actually makes sense. This is why we also offer a couple classes every year. These are opportunities to dig deeper, ask authentic questions, and learn how the church went from 12 misfits in the Middle East to what it is today.

When you get married you realize that you have new obligations to your spouse. When you have a child you realize that you have new obligations to that child. But did you know that when you join a church you inherit obligations to other people? It's true. The Bible, more than anything else, calls us the family of God, and family has obligations. This is why just attending church is not enough. It's also why one of the first ways we seek to get people plugged in is by getting them serving. Serving others is a way to partner with Jesus in the way he serves us.

Communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist. It's got a few different names, but ultimately it's a moment where the people of God are present with Jesus. This is why we do communion every single week. If you come to church and hear great worship and a great message, but never encounter God  then it wasn't actually church that you attended. Communion is a moment where we get to physically interact with God. We use our bodies to be close to him and to eat with him. To worship in this way is to train your body to love God with all of your strength.

Then there's everyone's favorite topic in church: generosity. We know, we know. But it's not just about money. The Bible says that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) and we have a tendency to believe that. It's being generous with your money, but also your time, your skills, your efforts. And not just generous to the church, but generous to those who actually need Jesus the most. To be generous is to engage your body in the same sort of love that put Jesus on the cross and raised him from the grave.