Upward, Inward, Outward

Upward. Inward. Outward.

It may appear cryptic if you don’t know what it means, but for those of us at Watermark Community Church, it is the air we breathe. These three words summarize the process we long to see our people take in their relationship with God.

Upward—we want them to understand the gospel and have a relationship with God. This is the most fundamental step of the process, and without it, neither of the other steps is possible.

Inward—According to Jesus, the two greatest commands are to love God and love others. Once people have a relationship with God in place, our desire is for them to come into the family and engage in genuine community.

Outward—The goal of community is not that it would center solely on us, but rather that it would lead to mission (going out). As we learn to truly love each other within a community of faith, our desire and prayer is that we will learn to love our unsaved friends and neighbors as well, and that we, through proper understanding of the gospel and community, will be moved to live life on mission. In fact, our goal is for our community not to be merely a community, but rather a missional community, where we are living life on mission together.

Ultimately, the process is not meant to be linear, but cyclical. As we go throughout or Christian lives, we need to continually return to the gospel, both for forgiveness as we continue to sin, and as our motivation for our other steps in our walk with God (God’s love for us in the cross should motivate our love for God and our love for God should motivate our love for others). Also, as we live life on mission, our goal is to bring new people into this process, so just as the gospel (Upward) leads to community (Inward), and community leads to mission (Outward), mission always leads back to the gospel.

Everything we do at Watermark centers around the ideas of Upward, Inward, Outward (ie. gospel, community, and mission). This has been incredibly helpful for me as I have started my work there, since I am not responsible for starting the youth ministry from scratch on a philosophical level; instead, my job is to use these three steps as a skeleton and build a ministry where the youth will be encouraged to move through these steps. Obviously, maturity in Christ—not simply moving people through a process—is our goal, but this process is a great summary of how we want to see people mature in Christ and it has given me a great foundation as I have tried to figure out how to start the youth ministry here.