WHO WE ARE

Sturbridge Worship Center is a community of believers committed to a Biblical lifestyle that manifests itself in passionate worship, the power of the Holy Spirit, a lifestyle of love and holiness and a commitment to personal and corporate prayer. Our vision is to be a New Testament church that is consistently moving towards a more complete manifestation of the fullness of Christ in “body” ministry, as described in Ephesians 4:11-16. We believe that every believer is called to be a “minister” as the outflow of our Christianity and we seek to create an environment that equips, encourages and releases each member to find their proper place of expression in the Lord’s body!

House of Prayer
Sturbridge Worship Center is committed to being one of our region’s driving forces in bringing forth a center for 24 hour a day worship and intercession. We believe that God is establishing His international house of prayer all across the earth. It is our commission from the Lord to provide laborers, resources and modeling for the body of Christ in this region for the purpose of establishing a night and day prayer covering over Central New England.

Worship
Worship is a vital part of our identity as a local fellowship of believers. We are actively engaged in offering to the Lord a sacrifice of passionate worship. Our vision includes regular congregational worship as well as becoming a resource to the larger body of Christ through the writing of anointed worship music as well as the production of music CD’s to bless the body at large. We are also actively engaged in developing traveling worship teams to serve in conference environments and to assist other local congregations in raising up worship teams of their own.

Leadership Development
We are committed as a church to investing in each individual member of the body of Christ to see that each one of us reaches the full measure of what God the Father has called us to become. We believe that each one of us is called to be a person of influence for the kingdom of God in the lives of others and it is our goal to release each believer through training and character development. We have a distinct focus on training men and women of God to rise up as leaders in the kingdom of God, both at a local level and to the wider body of Christ.

Children
The Lord is calling for the church in America to capture this next generation of children through creative, passionate, relevant discipleship. Each child, both old and young, is important to the Lord and it is a part of our vision to raise up a children’s ministry that is unique in both its creativity and its depth of impartation. God wants to use the children NOW! not some day down the road, and it is our desire to play a part in imparting the gift of faith to the children of New England.

Youth
The youth of today are going farther than ever before. It is our conviction that God is going to bring revival amidst the youth culture in the immediate future. Sturbridge Worship Center is actively seeking means by which we can be catalysts for this coming revival. We are committed to building a strong, Biblical mentoring environment that will encourage each young person to stand up against the pull of the world, not to just resist the tide, but to play a part in changing the tide of despair in the youth culture.

Multi-media and Learning Resources
Sturbridge Worship Center seeks to be a contemporary fellowship that is actively making use of the technology available to our generation for the purpose of outreach and for providing a variety of learning tools for the wider body of Christ. We are also convinced that we will be developing a variety of written, audio and video teaching resources as a gift to the Church of the 21st century.

Conference Ministry
Sturbridge Worship Center is more than just a local church! It is a part of our mission to become a center of refreshing, impartation and equipping for the saints of God throughout the wider regions of the body of Christ. This will find its expression through a variety of means but one of those means will be that we intend to host a progressively increasing number of conference settings for both youth and adults. It is our goal to offer a diverse schedule of ministries for the building up of the regional body of Christ, and to dedicate our facility and resources to building the kingdom of God throughout the region, not just in our own local church.

Outreach
It is our goal at Sturbridge Worship Center to be a church that is reaching into our own local community and the nations of the earth. We believe that our mission is diverse in its expression but that the underlying purpose behind what we do is making Jesus famous in the earth, through love, service, and the power of the Holy Spirit. We intend to accomplish this through music, compassion ministries, visitation and more in the days that lie ahead.

Missions
Our local fellowship is committed to missions through two primary means: financial investment and personal participation. Fifteen percent of all tithes and offerings that come into Sturbridge Worship Center goes directly into supporting missions abroad and para-church ministries in the states. We are committed to sowing good seed into the nations in the form of our first fruits as well as our lives. Sturbridge Worship Center is currently developing relationships abroad with the intent of engaging members of the body in both short and long term missions involvement.

Community Life / Home Fellowships
Community life is a vital part of the kingdom of God (Acts 2:42-47) and we are committed to developing a vibrant, healthy, Christian community life. We are working towards this through the avenues of home fellowships, times of corporate recreation and fellowship and our regular times of worship together. Through these means as well as the nurturing of each one’s personal relationships it is our prayer that every member of the body will be joined to others in strong loving friendships that will provide both a source of comfort and opportunities for humble service.

Networking / Inter Church Partnering
Sturbridge Worship Center’s identity is rather unique in that we are a regional church with wide spread influence for a church of our size. The Lord has called us to be a hub for networking and equipping the larger body of Christ through hosting various events, relational networking and through the means of our conference ministry. We devote a significant portion of our time, prayers and resources into the church of New England with the utmost conviction that as the “whole” body is strengthened our own local fellowship will be made strong as well. It is one of our goals to raise up a servant hearted people who love the Lord’s bride unselfishly as John the Baptist. (John 3:30)

Lion’s Den Ministries
Lion’s Den Ministries is the personal ministry of Pastor Dan and Tammy as God uses them in the wider body of Christ. It is through these means that Pastor Dan’s writing ministry will go forth as well as different facets of the networking and event planning that we will be undertaking. Lion’s Den is a separate nonprofit ministry that will provide a non-threatening para church organization that will enable local churches to co-labor without the obstacle of church to church competition and many of the other awkward issues that can sometimes arise between churches.

Compassion Ministries
It is our goal to engage in regional compassion ministries in the days that lie ahead. We believe that it is essential to a healthy mindset of humility that we engage in caring for those in various forms of need. It is our conviction that one of the greatest personal revelations of Christ that a believer can encounter is when they encounter the Lord through caring for the poor in spirit. We are currently in a season of waiting on the Lord for specific direction and workers to know the various avenues through which we will fulfill this part of our calling in an ongoing way.

Biblical / Ministerial Training
Sturbridge Worship Center is called to be a training environment to equip men and women of God for a life of abandonment and service unto Christ. It is our intent to create an atmosphere that promotes both the practical development of a healthy, mature Christian lifestyle and a well thought out, accurate Biblical scholarship that will honor the Lord. We desire to raise up men and women of the Word who are not hearers only, but doers of the “whole” word of God.

Internship
Developing the potential of young people is a significant part of our sense of mission as a church. Sturbridge Worship Center and Lion’s Den Ministries are in the process of developing a unique internship program for young people who would like to invest a year in being equipped and mentored in their Christian faith and in practical Christian service. This program will involve the young people who participate in a diversity of settings including classroom training, service projects, the house of prayer, the practical administrative life of a number of local and regional ministries and more.

A Center for Healing
One of our greatest longings and convictions about the future of Sturbridge Worship Center is that we are called to be a center for the healing of the spirit, soul and body. We are committed to standing on God’s promises concerning the work of Christ in healing that has been provided for through the Cross. We are standing on God’s promises and have seen the first fruits of what we believe is a healing revival that is soon to break forth across the body of Christ. It is our intention to raise up an environment conducive to allowing the Lord to bring forth this purpose in our midst that the captives may be set free.

Family Life
Sturbridge Worship Center cares deeply about the welfare of the whole family and is committed to pursuing an ever increasing degree of wisdom for the betterment of every family under our care, through teaching, counseling, prayer and modeling of solid Christian examples. We desire to play a part in turning the tide of broken homes that is sweeping through the church in America while being a place of refuge and restoration for those who have already been wounded by the pain of broken family relationships.

We at Sturbridge Worship Center desire to be a church that is aggressively “pressing for the mark of the high calling of God”, even as we confess freely and humbly that we have much yet to learn and fulfill. Each of the above points of vision is a goal that we are reaching for with a whole heart even as we recognize what a tremendous task lies ahead of us to become mature in these things. That’s why they’re called vision! We have seen the mountain top, are pressing hard and gladly welcome you to consider joining us as we journey towards a more mature expression of our life together in God. If in any point you see the great gap between who we are today and what we are reaching for in our tomorrows, please forgive our lack and pray for us. We know that it is only by grace that we will reach these goals, yet we press on with the confidence of the words of Paul, Philippians. 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!”