2. Core Values

Our core values are the principles that guide our work and decisions, and establish our culture as an organization.

    Truth

First of all, we are united and guided by our Christian faith.

We Believe:

  • The Bible is the inspired and only infallible Word of God, our final authority for faith and practice.
  • There is only one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  • Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, as the Bible teaches.  He existed as God with the Father and the Holy Spirit from eternity past.  He became human when He was born of Mary, a virgin.  He lived a sinless life, died on the cross to provide our salvation, rose from death bodily, and ascended to the Father’s right hand.
  • Only by faith in Christ and rebirth by the Holy Spirit can lost and sinful people be saved.
  • The Holy Spirit indwells all Christ-followers, uniting them in one spiritual body, and enabling them to fulfill God’s purposes in their lives, churches, and communities.
  • The love of Jesus Christ motivates His followers to provide food for the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome to the stranger, clothes for the naked, and to visit the sick and imprisoned.
  • Jesus is coming again in power and glory to gather His people to glory with Him, and to execute final, eternal judgment on Satan and all who followed him in rebellion against God.

All truth is God’s truth.  Every representative of Ambassadors of Reconciliation must affirm and live out a commitment to these core biblical realities.  Only on this foundation can real and effective healing be constructed.  Only those philosophies and methods of treatment that are compatible with this filter will result in positive, eternal gain.

    Love and Respect

Toward inmates and their families.

We believe that every individual is made in the image of God, and deserves our love and respect, even as the Bible tells us that God regards each person with love and esteem as a person of eternal value.  This is true even though they may be different from us economically, ethnically, culturally and philosophically.  They may identify themselves with different world views, sexual preferences, moral convictions, political allegiances, and religious commitments.  They may even offend our senses with their appearance and hygiene, but we are, as God’s children and ambassadors, to see them with God’s eyes: precious and beloved, hurting and lost, seeking (often in all the wrong places) the love, healing and reconciliation that God longs to bring into their lives.  Only in the humility of Christ can we reflect God’s love and respect to others, and only that love and respect will win a hearing for God’s truth in the gospel.


James 2:1–5 (NLT)  My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?   For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes.  If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor”—well, doesn’t this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives?  Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters.  Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith?  Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him?

Matthew 25:39–40 (ESV)  ‘When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

Toward each other across ethnic and denominational lines. 

We must rise above private agendas, personal pride and hurt feelings, to live out the unity that so delights our loving God and Savior, and so powerfully reflects His transforming grace in the lives of His people!  We must speak the truth in love to each other, and hold each other accountable to biblical standards of conduct as we work together for the common good.  We must create a culture that extends and receives grace and forgiveness, putting others before ourselves.

We want to live out and perpetuate a culture that focuses, not on those convictions which divide us, but on the essential commonalities that unite us as Christ-followers.  These are the basics of the gospel, and the passionate commitment to carry that gospel of hope to hurting, struggling people whom God loves.  This is not to deny the importance of our various convictions in our daily walk and service to God, but it is to recognize that the Kingdom task for which we are uniting is bigger than those issues, just as God Himself is bigger than all we can believe or think about Him.


Romans 16:17–18 (ESV) I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.  For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites…

1 Corinthians 1:10 (ESV) I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

1 Corinthians 12:24–26 (ESV) … But God has so composed the body… that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Ephesians 5:21 (NIV)  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.