What We Believe

We believe God created the world we live in, and everything that exists. We do not claim to know how God chose to create. We simply believe that, at some point, God initiated creation and continues to sustain it through us. However God chose to create, we have a responsibility to love the earth that has been gifted to us.

We believe that God came to live alongside us as Jesus. God became human, and by doing so, redeemed what it means to be human. God coming to be human means there is no division between the sacred and the secular. God can be found in all parts of life. We do not see any space as being “set aside” for God. Instead, we see our personal lives as set aside for God, and all things can be holy. Likewise, we believe all of life can be worship. Worship does not happen only on Sunday mornings, but at any time anywhere. On a Sunday morning, we will dress, talk, and act the same as we would on a Saturday night.

We believe that the most important instruction Jesus gave us is The Jesus Creed*. This comes from Matthew 22:36-40, where Jesus tell us that the most essential thing in life is to love God and love others. The Jesus Creed is the mark of The Journey. Everything we do and talk about comes out of this simple idea.

We believe God’s greatest act of humility and love was giving his life for all of us. Jesus died on a cross so that we might have hope now and in the future. We celebrate this weekly through the Eucharist as we remember his death on our behalf. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead, reuniting all of humanity with God. We are now free to live in intimate community with God and others. We are free to know and be known, to love and be loved, to care and be cared for. All the brokenness and divisions we have made for ourselves are repaired. The equality with which we were created in God’s image is now restored regardless of income, gender, race, orientation, culture, or situation in life. God has provided hope to all people through his grace expressed through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and we can have a direct relationship with God by following Christ with our lives. We live this way of life by bringing good to the world and loving people as Jesus loves us.

We believe the Holy Spirit is God within us. It is through the Holy Spirit that we live lives of goodness and compassion, showing God’s love to the world. The blessings God has given us of his grace and the Holy Spirit are not just for our sake alone. Just as God tells Abraham to bless others with the blessing he has been given (Genesis 12:1-3), we are also blessed so that we may bless others. We are not blessed because we are special. We are blessed by God to bless other people. Blessed to be a blessing.

We believe the Bible to be an essential resource for understanding how our stories relate to God’s story. We are not rigid on how the Bible should be understood or interpreted. No matter anyone’s views on the Bible, we want to have a conversation about it. We believe that human beings, in an amazing endeavor with God, wrote these beautiful words that we have today, and we can find ourselves in its stories.

We believe the church is a unified group of people who are bringing God’s love to all people. While we do believe that there is a heaven where we will all be in community with God and each other, we also believe that the Kingdom Jesus talks about in the bible is right here, right now. We believe it is a way of life that changes everything around us. The beauty is that we get to participate with Christ in bringing this Kingdom to the world today by mirroring Christ’s humility and compassion. We believe the church should always work together in love and unity, devoted to helping people here and now as we show God’s love to each other and to the world around us.

* “The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others” by Scot McKnight, 2004