 |
 |
 |
Some Frequently Asked Questions About Oasis Community Church
Is Oasis a charismatic Church?
While many people from a charismatic background have made Oasis their home through the years, we don’t consider ourselves a charismatic church—not that there’s anything wrong with that! We do believe the sign gifts are still active today, but you probably wouldn’t see them expressed in our worship services. And while we do consider ourselves to be Spirit-filled, we probably mean something different by that than our charismatic friends!
Are you part of a denomination?
We like to say that we have the best of both worlds. Oasis is affiliated with a group of churches called the Brethren Church, headquartered in Ashland, Ohio. But there are individual churches in Phoenix that are bigger than our entire fellowship of churches! We choose to be part of this group for a couple of reasons: One, to reach people around the world for Jesus who we couldn’t reach by ourselves. And, two, to make ourselves accountable to others for our teaching and practice. You can read more about the Brethren at brethrenchurch.org.
So you support missions in other countries?
Yes, we do. The Brethren Church has effective mission fields in 10 different countries around the world: Malaysia, India, Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Philippines, Columbia, Argentina, Peru and Paraguay, as well as a school in the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky.
What’s your pastor’s background?
Jim Miller has been our pastor since the birth of Oasis in 1999. He and his wife Ann have been married for 27 years and have four children ranging from 16 to 23. Jim is a graduate of Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA and Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, OH (M Div degree). Jim grew up in the hills of western Pennsylvania and you can still hear the accent every so often!
Your church is pretty small, why is that?
Partly circumstance and partly design! Church planting is an unusual animal and it’s hard to predict exactly what a church will have to go through as it gets established. We’ve been as big as 125 and as small as 30. But our goal is to never be a huge church anyway. We believe that the smaller church can be a healthier church, particularly when it comes to relationship. Building the kind of friendships that lead to godly transformation is a high priority for us, and we believe that just happens better in a small group of people. Our goal would be to start several churches of 100-200 people as we grow to that size.
What about a building? You’ve been in a school for a while now.
Our heart has always been to let God decide when he wanted us to have a place of our own, whether that’s a stand alone building or space in a strip mall. We are still waiting for that go-ahead! Right now, both our size and the cost of property are a bit prohibitive (master of the understatement!) in looking for property, but we simply believe that when the time is right for us to be in our own space, God will put us there.
What are your views on theological issues like predestination and eternal security?We have longed believed that the Bible clearly talks about how God predestines people and saves them for all eternity. We just also believe that it also clearly talks about the free will of man to choose to follow God or not. Those may seem contradictory in some ways, but we think in the mind of God all that makes sense. If the Bible is willing to live in that tension, so are we. What we like to say about those kinds of issues is "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, love!"
