Our Mission
Following Jesus, Making Disciples
It’s a simple statement that’s based on living out the Great Commission. Every believer following Jesus the way God intended us to. Every believer invested in reaching the lost with the transforming power of the gospel of Christ.
Our Vision
CONNECT with GOD, the BODY, the COMMUNITY
The Vision is the method in which we employ to make the Mission happen. It’s about Connecting.
Connect with God – We want every attendee to connect with God (trust Him as their /Lord and Savior) and grow in their personal faith.
Connect with the Body – The Body Life of a congregation is a reflection of the spiritual life they have individually. Saints that are growing in their faith, care for one another. And when they care for one another, they work towards a common goal.
Connect with the Community – One of the downfalls of the American church in the last 50 years is that they got content with themselves. They forgot about reaching out to the lost, they forgot about investing in the life of another who is missing out on Jesus. The Grace Adventure will be addressing the plight of the lost in Elbow Lake and surrounding communities. We will care for our neighbor.
What is it going to look like when you visit Grace Free on a Sunday morning?
I think the word that best describes Sunday mornings at Grace is “alive”. You’re immediately made aware that Grace is blessed with an abundance of youth in the church. There’s excitement in the air as kids mill around connecting with their friends, while their parents are doing the same. I think the first time Kim and I walked in, we felt such a sweet spirit among the body of believers.
Sunday mornings start at 9 am, with children gathering in the fellowship hall for singing songs before moving to their classrooms. Every two months the children share a song during the worship service. We offer two adult classes during the Sunday School hour.
From 10-10:30 am, Grace offers a time of coffee and treats in the Fellowship Hall. This is for all ages. People gather around tables or engage in conversation throughout the fellowship hall. Be sure and grab a drink and cookie from the kitchen. I would guess that before you sit down, someone will begin a conversation with you.
From 10:30-11:45 am, we gather in the sanctuary for worship and a message from God’s Word. I believe in balance in our worship music (hymn, contemporary hymn, contemporary & retro contemporary worship). For our teaching time, I want the message to come alive and speak to all ages and all learning styles. With scripture being my focus, I’ll also utilize stories, video clips, music, and object lessons in communicating God’s Truths to the congregation. At this time in our service, we do not have a praise band but we do use praise singers with YouTube worship. As the congregation grows, we will develop a worship band.
What We Believe
God
We believe in one God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.
The Bible
We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.
The Human Condition
We believe that God created Adam and Eve in His image, but they sinned when tempted by Satan. In union with Adam, human beings are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from God, and under His wrath. Only through God’s saving work in Jesus Christ can we be rescued, reconciled, and renewed.
Jesus Christ
We believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures. Jesus—Israel’s promised Messiah—was conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father as our High Priest and Advocate.
The Work of Christ
We believe that Jesus Christ, as our representative and substitute, shed His blood on the cross as the perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins. His atoning death and victorious resurrection constitute the only ground for salvation.
The Holy Spirit
We believe that the Holy Spirit, in all that He does, glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. He convicts the world of its guilt. He regenerates sinners, and in Him, they are baptized into union with Christ and adopted as heirs in the family of God. He also indwells, illuminates, guides, equips, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.
The Church
We believe that the true church comprises all who have been justified by God’s grace through faith alone in Christ alone. They are united by the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ, of which He is the Head. The true church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of believers. The Lord Jesus mandated two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which visibly and tangibly express the gospel. Though they are not the means of salvation, when celebrated by the church in genuine faith, these ordinances confirm and nourish the believer.
Christian Living
We believe that God’s justifying grace must not be separated from His sanctifying power and purpose. God commands us to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our faith with care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the oppressed. With God’s Word, the Spirit’s power, and fervent prayer in Christ’s name, we are to combat the spiritual forces of evil. In obedience to Christ’s commission, we are to make disciples among all people, always bearing witness to the gospel in word and deed.
Christs Return
We believe in the personal, bodily, and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service, and energetic mission.
Response and Eternal Destiny
We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.
Our Pastor
Meet Pastor Dan & Kim Doebel:
Kim and I have been married for 42 years and have four grown children and two grandchildren. We love spending life together doing most anything. We like most sports (hiking, walking, biking, pickleball, volleyball). We own a camper and relish our time traveling across the United States. We especially love spending time with our children and extended family. We are Midwesterners with most of our life spent in Iowa. There’s something about wide open space and the beauty of God’s creation in the Midwest that keeps us here.
Looking back on when we began our life together:
The summer of Kim’s senior year of high school, her family moved to my hometown of Clear Lake, IA. I had graduated high school that summer, so I never met Kim until we were lined up for a blind date. I always tell people that Kim and I would have never hooked up if I was in school, she was the good Christian girl and I was . . . well, I was the boy your mom wouldn’t let you date.
We clicked right away and what stood out to me about Kim was, here was a girl who really lived out her faith. I hadn’t seen that in anyone else, I had seen plenty of hypocrites but not many teens who lived out what they believed in. Kim and I dated for six months before I made the decision to trust Christ as my Savior. In our first six months of dating, I peppered Kim with so many questions about God and her faith, questions that she didn’t always have the answers to. Every night, when I left her home, Kim would go to sit down with her father and share the questions I asked. With the wisdom of Solomon, her dad discerned I was searching, and he would share with Kim the answers I was looking for.
In July of 1979, I reached a point where I said, “I want to know Jesus, the same way that Kim knows him.” On a Sunday afternoon, in the Youth Pastor’s office, I invited Jesus into my life. Everything abruptly changed, I had direction, purpose, and meaning in my life. Kim’s spiritual life which had ridden on the coattails of her parents, became her own once she met me. Our deep conversations caused her to take ownership of her own faith and once I was saved, our walk with Christ grew as we sharpened each other.
God immediately laid on my heart a burden for teenagers and at the age of 23, we move to Chicago so I could attend Moody Bible Institute. Upon graduation, I did two years of full-time youth ministry on the south side of Chicago and then went to Davenport, IA to minister to teens for 27 years. It was during my final two years at Grace in Davenport, that God burdened me with churches that were in decline or going through difficult times. I left Grace to take on a twelve-year-old church plant that never got its footing under itself. During our time there, God stabilized the church, built a name for itself in the community, and saw steady growth. We realized after seven years that we had taken the church as far as we could take it, so I resigned in the winter of 2022.
We sold our home, hitched up our travel trailer, and traveled the next six months visiting family and enjoying what I would call an extended Sabbatical. We traveled to Texas, San Diego, CA, Arizona, and a month in Europe with our daughter. During our European trip, we had a Zoom conversation with Grace’s Search Committee. The needs that Grace had for a pastor matched up well with who I was. I love building and rebuilding ministries, that’s just how God designed me. This Fall, Grace begins its reboot that we’re calling “the Grace Adventure”. Kim and I are excited to call Elbow Lake home and be on this Adventure that God has called us to.