E - Engagement
Engagement: Expressing God's Love for people regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, race or ability.
Because Jesus was interested in people - shouting tax collectors out of trees, walking miles to see the sick, hearing every hard-luck story and seeing the potential in every rural peasant - we too make the effort to engage with our community.
We engage to spread the message about Jesus' saving power as an act of compassion. We engage because the great commission is not simply about evangelising with words, but also centrally about service to the poor, sick and needy and advocacy on their behalf.
We engage because the people who understand us best change us the most.
We engage in the most compassionate way we can think of because it is the most compassionate thing we can think of to do. Our instruction for a life in Christ is to "be compassionate as your heavenly father was compassionate."
The Bear seeks to be an organised community of compassion.