FAQs

Strong & Courageous is a 2-year Discipleship Journey designed to help people discover Jesus, grow stronger in their faith, and courageously join Him on mission to reach, serve, and disciple one more.

The LORD has blessed us by growing our church and by giving us the opportunity to launch a new campus at Grassey Lane. We are responding to these blessings by prayerfully seeking how God would have us use them for His Kingdom Purposes.

Strong & Courageous has Five Goals:

• 100% Participation

• Completed Construction of Ministry Facility at the Grassey Lane Location

• Encounter Jesus

• Grow Deeper

• Live on Mission

These goals will be supported by a One Fund initiative.

You may have been a part of church giving initiatives in the past. During these initiatives, you were asked to give a second gift "above and beyond" your usual gifts to make special initiatives like new buildings and new ministries possible.

Normally, you gave that gift to a "Building Fund," and you also continued to give offerings to the "General Fund."

At Cornerstone, we believe that it is all ONE MISSION that we're on. We want to encourage everyone to join in that mission and to unleash our generosity towards that mission. Under the One Fund initiative, your gifts will all flow into "one fund" that will support the general operating budget, the new facility construction, and the new Discipleship Journey.

A Disciple is someone:

• Following Jesus (“Follow Me”)

• Being changed by Jesus (“And I will make you”)

• Committed to the Mission of Jesus in the world (“Fishers of Men”)

The Greek word for “Disciple” (Mathetes) is defined as a “learner engaging in an apprentice relationship with a teacher.” This involves a clear process of becoming more like the Teacher, or in our context, like Jesus.

There are four challenges chronologically given by Jesus as He engages His initial Disciples and develops them into “fully trained” Disciples (Luke 6:40).

• Come and See: Given to those exploring faith in Jesus. It is the challenge to come and investigate the Faith (JN 1:39).

• Follow Me: Given to new believers. It is the challenge to walk alongside and learn to follow Jesus (JN 1:43).

• I Will Make You: Given to those growing in Christ. It is the challenge is to equip Disciples to live the life of a Jesus follower (MT 4:19).

• Fishers of Men: Given to fully trained Disciple-makers to go out and repeat the process with others (MT 4:19).

At Cornerstone, we are living this out in our Discipleship Journey through:

• Encounter Jesus – Meet the person of Jesus, explore faith in Him, and come to saving faith in Jesus alone.

• Grow Deeper – Grow in relationship with God, the Church, and the World.

• Live on Mission – Every person embraces their purpose and joins God’s mission in the world.

This Cornerstone Discipleship Journey is from December 2024 to December 2026. We ask that everyone prayerfully consider how they will participate. 

A personal discipleship assessment will be offered so that each person can evaluate their own spiritual journey, develop a personal discipleship profile, and explore ways to grow in their journey.

Your financial gifts to the Strong & Courageous initiative will also be over these two years. Every gift that is given to Cornerstone will go to the three key components of Cornerstone: Encounter Jesus, Grow Deeper, Live on Mission.

First and foremost, we are asking that you pray and seek God's leading of obedience in your life. Prepare your heart to hear Him and then do what He says. Engage in the Discipleship Journey during this season. Engage in personal reflection with God in the Strong & Courageous Discipleship Guide that you received during the S&C sermon series.

Talk with your spouse, your family, or others about what this commitment will mean for this next season of your life. We are asking that you make a sacrificial commitment to gospel-centered generosity: whatever it is that God is leading you towards. Follow His leading.

Finally, we ask that you prepare to be amazed. It is an awesome God who we serve, and He is going to move in huge ways. We anticipate an unprecedented impact from our collective Strong & Courageous commitments: something only God can do.

Your Strong & Courageous commitment is through December 31, 2026.

Through the Strong & Courageous Discipleship Journey, every contribution to God through Cornerstone is a contribution to the One Fund.

Every aspect of the ministry vision God is calling us towards will be funded through Strong & Courageous. Every gift made will go into the same fund and will be part of our Strong & Courageous giving.

Our regular gifts become a celebration and a contribution towards what God is doing in us and through us to help all people discover and deepen their relationship with Jesus Christ.

Be creative as you explore ways you and your family can give towards Strong & Courageous.

You might have stocks or real estate property. Alternatively, you may have stored resources that God has blessed you with in the past and that He just might be calling you to give out of during this time.

Please let us know if you need assistance with facilitating gifts of stock or property, and we would be happy to help you with that. You can contact our finance ministry at accounting@gocornerstone.church.

If you are someone currently seeking to make payments to pay off debt right now, we commend you for making progress on that, and you should continue to do so. We would be happy to help you in this journey and/or to recommend an Equip class to learn about biblical budgeting and debt management strategies. 

Being in debt does not, however, make someone “excused” from giving. Giving is not about what God wants from you. Rather, it is about what God wants for you. It should be our joy and privilege to give at all times.

Please contact us if you need assistance with this or if you would like to speak to a budgeting counselor, and we would be honored to help.

Strong & Courageous is about your total, radical, and sacrificial generosity to God's mission at Cornerstone. We believe that God calls us to action in times of hardship just as much as He does in times of abundance. That looks different for every person. But Strong & Courageous is about a heart change, one that is only accomplished by surrendering our lives completely to God in the area of generosity.

God may be calling you to make a commitment that you don't quite know how to fulfill right now but that you believe God will provide for as you seek ways to sacrifice and work towards that commitment. Remember, this is a 2-year journey. It is not about the size of the gift, but your obedience towards what God is calling you to in this season

The primary goal of this discipleship journey is 100% participation of every person that considers Cornerstone home.

Strong & Courageous was crafted specifically with you in mind.

Strong & Courageous is a One Fund generosity initiative, meaning that it is different from a traditional capital campaign where you are called to give an extra gift above and beyond your normal giving and thus creating two steps for people who aren't yet giving.

Strong & Courageous is a call to sacrificial, gospel-centered generosity for absolutely everyone at Cornerstone. If you have never given before, this is your chance to get in the game with a committed sacrifice. We really hope you will.

Strong & Courageous is about the vision for our church. We believe that the local church is one of the most compelling missions to give towards, and we would really love for you to make Cornerstone your home and join us in Strong & Courageous.

If you are ready for it, this is a perfect time for you to put a stake in the ground and make Cornerstone your church.

Great question. People take different spiritual steps at different times. Some people begin praying before they begin attending church. Giving is another spiritual step, and it comes at different times for different people.

However, one thing is for sure. Just like other spiritual disciplines, giving draws us closer to God, and God is calling all of us to give (Matthew 6:19).

Whether you have or haven't taken the spiritual step of baptism, we would still encourage you to join us in this Strong & Courageous Initiative. We firmly believe that it will draw you closer to God and hopefully to a place where you are ready to make the decision to be baptized.

Borrow - We know this is not a popular opinion but for a short season we are going to have to borrow about $3,000,000.00.  Our plan is to pay off this debt within 6 years.  

One of the things we want to mention is that the size of the debt will be determined by the size of our generosity and participation.  It is one of the reasons we want to see 100% of our people engaged.  The more engaged people are and the greater our generosity, the more we will be able to accomplish and the less debt we will have to carry.

Instead of separating our gifts into different funds, we’re encouraging everyone to contribute to a single unified mission. Every gift will support our collective vision and advance God’s work through Cornerstone Church.

This is what it looks like in a very practical sense. Some people are used to designating their giving for specific purposes like the food pantry, benevolence or even the building fund.  While those things are all good and important, what we are setting out to do is to bring everything together into one unified vision for what Cornerstone does as a church. There will no longer be separate “funds” for you to give to, but you support the areas you used to support by giving to Cornerstone church.

We are very committed to the next generation. While our students won’t initially have designated space, they will have multiple spaces they will be able to use to continue building a student ministry that reaches and disciples students for years to come.

For all finance and giving related questions, please email accounting@gocornerstone.church.

For all other questions, please email us at info@gocornerstone.church.