Faith Journey

In the mission statement of Atonement, we declare that we are “a church under the leadership of Jesus Christ where . . .” and then we list several statements that describe how that leadership is lived out. The very first statement is “growth is expected.” Spiritual growth, the act of moving closer in a relationship to Jesus Christ takes place in what we call the faith journey. 

The faith journey can be graphically depicted as our path toward growing closer to Jesus. Becoming an active part of the Atonement faith community will challenge you as well as deepen your relationship with the Savior of the world. 

On this page and in other resources, we illustrate what we have learned about spiritual growth to help you understand this journey.

The stages of spiritual growth

In our discovery process, we learned that in the faith journey there are four main stages of spiritual growth; Meeting Jesus, Following Jesus, Keeping Close to Jesus and Loving Like Jesus. The following statements may bring more clarity to the four stages of spiritual growth.

• Meeting Jesus – “I believe in God, but I am not sure about Jesus. My faith is not a significant part of my life.”
• Following Jesus – “I believe in Jesus and I am working on what it means to get to know him.”
• Keeping close to Jesus – “I feel really close to Jesus and depend on him daily for guidance.” 
• Loving like Jesus – “My relationship with Jesus is the most important relationship in my life. It guides everything I do.

If we were to plot the faith journey out graphically, it might look something like this: