Our Story

On Sunday, July 4, 2004, a group of about 20 people met for the first time in the Daneker’s back yard. Most of those people formed the initial core group that continued to meet every Sunday would eventually become Horizon Church. Sitting in a backyard circle on that hot and humid Sunday, this group of people started dreaming about the kind of church we hoped to start.  Among our dreams we fleshed out that summer, we dared to hope that some of the following characteristics might come to describe us...

• A healthy church.  We all hoped that we could build and enjoy healthy relationships with one another.  Conflicts and disagreements would be resolved in ways that honored God and recognized the dignity of other persons.  We dreamed that our church would be led by men and women of integrity.  Genuine authenticity and transparency would characterize our teachers and leaders and would mark all of our relationships.  We dreamed of being a growing group of people with the courage to love each other deeply.
• A relevant church.  We believed God is never out-of-date.  It became our conviction that we ought to address the real needs, issues, and questions of contemporary people, and we ought to do it in an environment that is comfortable and inviting to people today. We never wanted people to expect to have to go backwards in time or cultural experience if they came to one of our church events.
• A grace-filled church. Grace would define all of our relationships.  If God’s activity on planet earth had to be condensed to one single motive, it would be grace.  We hoped to know and experience grace for ourselves, and of equal importance, we hoped that grace would come to characterize the dominant ‘mood’ of our church.
• An outward-focused church.  Oddly, the church is one of the few organizations on the planet the exists for the benefit of those who are not yet participants.  That’s a really hard thing to live out.  Our natural tendency is to focus on those who are already here.  But we dreamed that one day it might be normal for us to be thinking about those who are not yet here but should be.
• A Bible-focused church.  We’re committed to the truth that the Bible is the Word of God for all of life.  It would be nice if the Bible contained an index that covered all of the problems and issues a person might encounter in life. Although it doesn’t, it is how God has primarily chosen to reveal Himself and it contains God’s world-view for living most successfully on this planet
• A life-transforming church. God is after life-transformation. Every person is on a journey and God’s desire is for His plans and purposes to first intersect and then merge with all of us along the way.  Ultimately, God wants to direct the journey.  A church should provide the safe place for a  person to investigate the claims of  Christianity and then to experience the life trans-formation.

Invite
      We want to be inviting people and we hope what we do is appealing. We’ll do our best to do services and events that you can be proud of and to which you can confidently invite your friends, neighbors, and family. We expect that we’ll grow as we make invitations and people take us up on those invitations. Additionally, this means we want to be inviting people to become followers of Jesus Christ and then live life in the Kingdom of God.

Connect
Once a person has been invited and attends, we hope to help that person build genuine, meaningful, life-long connections with God and with other people. We hope to help people build a relationship with God and others through corporate worship, teaching, opportunities to serve, involvement in Bible studies, the practice of the spiritual disciplines, and real involvement in the life and care of the church community. We hope to help people build relationships with each other and modeling transparency and authenticity among the leadership of Horizon.

Grow
When you decide to follow Jesus, you’re in. There’s no probationary period or trial run. It’s God’s goal that we all grow in our faith and love for Him and a lost and hurting world around us. Finally, of course, we push “Repeat.”

Connect
Once a person has been invited and attends, we hope to help that person build genuine, meaningful, life-long connections with God and with other people. We hope to help people build a relationship with God and others through corporate worship, teaching, opportunities to serve, involvement in Bible studies, the practice of the spiritual disciplines, and real involvement in the life and care of the church community. We hope to help people build relationships with each other and modeling transparency and authenticity among the leadership of Horizon.

Join us every Sunday as we gather to worship together at 10am