You probably heard the news… Thousand Hills International Church has identified new core values! Since we changed our name from Hilversum International Christian Center to Thousand Hills the banners with our core values have disappeared.
We felt it was very important to revise the core values without throwing out the great heritage that we have as a church since the start in 2006. And we did not want to rush the process. Rather, we wanted to have as many people involved in redefining our core values. Klaas van Mill has done an excellent job in guiding this process.
In an earlier post, on June 17, I presented those core values – exalt, connect, grow, reach and serve – but did not have a chance to elaborate on them. So that’s what I’d like to do in this post and in some posts I will be writing in the coming few weeks. Why on earth did we pick THESE core values? Let me give you a little bit of insight in the first one, Exalt.
Exalt – because God deserves all the glory
In the past the first core value of our church was “Experience Based Worship.” Although I firmly believe that we can experience the presence of God when we seek His face in worship, the goal of worship is not that we experience something. The goal is we please God with what we offer to Him, our songs, our music, our gifts and talents, our tithes and offerings, but even more than that: He wants us to offer our whole lives to Him!
The world “Exalt” may sound a bit old-fashioned. It is not very common. The reason we picked it is that the word “worship” has been used so often in relation to music, that it now seems to be the name of a musical style. Actually, there is a musical genre called Praise & Worship. The idea you may get is that you can only worship God if you have a great voice.
We can worship Him with our voices (as good or bad as they may be), instruments, but also with our actions if they are pleasing to Him. “Exalt,” because it is fairly unknown, doesn’t have that association with just worship music. When you use a not-so-common word it also allows us to define what we believe “exalt” is really about.
This doesn’t mean that we think having great worship & praise music in church is not important. Not at all! Music is one of the primary vehicles of communication in our current society and people expect the best quality because that’s what they hear on the radio, on TV and download on iTunes. The better the musical quality is of the worship in church and the more the musical style is in line with current musical tastes, the better we will be able to communicate God’s love through our music to our Thousand Hills folks as well as the people outside.
Let’s exalt the Lord together, because He deserves all the glory!