Church-Family

Serving our church-family and our community through regular Impact is a necessary part of our worship and a significant part of our church-family life. Unlike other church communities, these are not things “Christians” do for “The least of these”, but rather they are crucial ways we (no matter our religious status or affiliation) partner with the work of God already present in the lives and community around us.

Unlike other church communities who ask you to “volunteer to serve” as a way to go beyond the standard, serving is the standard at Kaleo. As a priesthood of all believers, we must practice intentional service in community together as we chart our own path to be a part of the Body of Christ whose entire life is bent toward service in it’s own unique way. This may mean being involved in projects and serving opportunities already available or coming to the pastors with your gifts and working out a way to use them for the benefit of the whole. 

The Pareto principle in the church usually means that roughly 80% of the work needed to sustain the church comes from 20% of the people. At Kaleo, we hope to re-envision this principle. We want to see 100% serving; in that service, we want to see each person is spending 80% of their time doing work within their passion, calling, skills, and gifts and 20% of the time it is washing the dishes or doing things that they don’t want to do, but need done regardless.

Participation isn’t a prerequisite for belonging. We recognize many who are a part of this community don’t participate in everything we do or some outward and artificial standard of growth. On the flipside of the same coin, growth is a core value of ours and growing participation is one of the ways we are able to see inward growth as well as Impact our community and become the Body of Christ in and for the world. We do informally note these forms of participation for signs of growth as we keep the pulse on equipping this particular community to grow both in spiritual formation and as ministers in and for the world. Other things we track include our church-family’s growth around our other core values.

Here are some of the more numerically-driven ways we track growth:

• Regular and consistent presence and participation at Kaleo Holiday services.
• Regular and consistent presence and participation in a Life-Impact Group including food or financial contributions as outlined by that group.
• Bringing food contributions for potluck meals.
• Regular and consistent tithing on income.
• Receiving, opening, reading, and responding as needed to weekly emails.

Anyone who is interested in doing an internship or receiving a local minister’s license on the path to ordination in the Church of the Nazarene must be doing all these things as well as a couple of extra requirements. See our collaboration page for more information. 

Eccumenically we are affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene and our pastors are ordained in this denomination within the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. If you aren’t familiar with the Church of the Nazarene, we are similar, in theology, to United Methodists who share our theological forefather, John Wesley. 

The Church of the Nazarene’s distinctive gift to the church universal is the reclamation of Biblical holiness and an emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s presence and action in our lives. Practically, this is an insistence that every part of you and your life matters to God. Through the deep, base-notes, of the Holy Spirit prevenient grace we can know and be known by God, which with nurturing can and should grow into an awareness of the sanctity of every choice, purchase, and schedule we make. 

We take our responsibility to children very seriously at Kaleo. We have background checks on every-single children’s worker and also require a children’s sexual abuse educational training in advance of serving with children in compliance with the NazareneSafe denominational protocol. We also have our own policies for appropriate touches, risky situations, and reporting that all workers must read and sign their name to comply with. Read and sign our policy here.

Additionally, it is a good reminder for everyone, that Tennessee law mandates all persons to report suspected child abuse or neglect to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) at 615-360-4200. Suspected abuse includes physical, emotional or sexual abuse. 

Children must be free of communicable disease to participate in the Godly Play or nursery programs. Parents, please read and comply with our health protocol.