What we believe
We believe that God reaches out to us in different ways. God is the creator of the universe and giver of all that is good. God is the savior—known boldly and intimately in Jesus and His life, death, and resurrection—who shows us how to live and love. God is the Spirit who enables us to make a difference in our world and in the lives of others.
We believe that we don’t have all the answers and that disagreement and discussion are healthy. We believe that Christian community is Christian not because it’s like-minded on every issue but because it is rooted in Jesus, who is a lot more interesting than religion has made Him seem.
We believe in the freedom of the individual, led by God's Spirit within the family of faith, to read and interpret the Scriptures, relying on historical understandings by the Church and on the best methods of modern biblical study.
We believe that sin, both what we have done and what we have failed to do—the Bible calls it “missing the mark”, St. Augustine calls it “disordered love”—describes the reality that things are not as they should be: we are self-obsessed, broken, fearful, and oppressive. It’s what Jesus came to save us from.
We believe that the Bible is a beautiful, God-inspired, complex, and challenging book. We believe that its message of grace matters most when we live it out in a way that people’s lives are transformed (our own lives included).
We believe that grace is the love, honesty, and compassion that God gives and shows us in Jesus. It’s how Jesus saves us, heals us, sets us free, and increases our capacity for love.
We believe that we need each other. Whether single, married/partnered, divorced or widowed, it’s a lot easier to follow God with friends than it is by ourselves.
We believe that role of leadership in the church is best expressed through servanthood, following the model of our Servant Lord, seeking full partnership of all of God's people in mission and ministry.
We believe that the goal of church is not to make people more religious but to help people fall more in love with God and therefore become more fully human.
We believe that we are called to reach out to our neighbors both locally and globally and serve them in ways that make a difference.
We believe that spiritual practices like prayer, reading the Bible, participating in small groups, fasting, and tithing are vital to our faith.
We believe in the principle of a free church in a free state and the opposition to any effort either by church or state to use the other for its own purposes.
DeNOMINATIONAL AFFILIATION
Our goal is to be a multi-denominational community where people from diverse spiritual traditions or with no religious experience feel at home.