Our Vision

We are a church that joyfully receives the entire Great Tradition of Christianity. We do our best to avoid merely picking out parts of the Tradition to embrace while ignoring other aspects. We want the fullness of the tradition to shape our lives and draw us to Christ. At the center of the Tradition is Christ. He IS the fullness of the Tradition. We seek to avoid innovations or novelties that depart from the Tradition and which would be foreign to, for example, the first thousand years of Christianity. These innovations inevitably diminish Christ, which would be disastrous.

How do we define the “Great Tradition”?

In the words of the Vincentian Canon (5th Century summary of the Tradition) - We embrace what has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all.” What this means is that if some belief or practice is unique to only one particular part of the church (Roman Catholic or Reformed or Baptist, etc.), or limited to one particular region of the Church, or one particular era, then we may justly question whether it should be considered part of the Great Tradition. It may or may not be helpful or heretical. All aspects of the Tradition should be filtered through the question of whether they glorify Christ and draw our attention to Him.

What are some of the elements of the Full Tradition? Below is a list of some of the major components (not exhaustive)

Creeds - the ecumenically agreed upon, core expressions of Christian faith

Councils - the proclamations and clarifications of the Church gathered at various important moments. We embrace the ecumenical councils agreed upon by both Eastern / Western Christianity.

Calendar - The Church’s way of sanctifying time and reshaping our imagination to be focused on Christ

Symbols - The many images (cross, fish, bread, icons, etc.) that embody our identity and capture our story

Interpretation of Scripture - The Bible is best understood as a part of the tradition, not as something in tension with the tradition. It has a distinctive role within the tradition as a written, unchanging witness to Christ. The Church has historically interpreted the Bible in particular patterns; we embrace these patterns (such as “christological readings”) as normative

Saints - The “Communion of Saints” is the recognition that we belong to a large family of those from every time and place who have devoted themselves to Christ. We do not worship saints; we honor them and emulate their faithfulness to Christ.

Polity - The Church at the time of the death of the original apostles (end of 1st cent.) universally embraced a form that protected authority and guarded the sacramental / teaching life of the church. We embrace this historic ordering of the church (bishop, priest, deacon) as enduringly relevant.

Rites, Rituals & Practices - our identity as belonging to Christ is reinforced and shaped by essential rites, rituals, and practices (baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, worship, etc.)

NOTE: By submitting to this “Full Tradition” we are not seeking to pass judgment on other Christians or despise our own roots (if we grew up in a church that did not embrace elements of the above). It is merely an invitation to embrace the fullness of Christ to the best of our ability and knowledge.

Choosing a church in 21st-century often means deciding between one of the many siloed streams of the Christian faith (charismatic, evangelical, reformed, sacramental, liturgical, etc., etc.) over and against the others. We find these divisions, for the most part, unhelpful and unnecessary. They were not part of the first 1,000 years of Christianity. They are largely the legacy of the Protestant reformation and the institutional fragmentation of the Church.

Our question: why would we not want to embrace the fullest expression of orthodox Christian worship possible? Thus our commitment:

+ We are Liturgical - we worship, as all Christians did (until recent times) within a structure. These words, rituals, and practices shape our faith and allow us to have a highly participatory service that is always focused on Christ - resisting personality-centered, individualistic pitfalls that plague much of the modern Church.

+ We are Charismatic - we believe in the full operative power of the gifts of the Spirit. We may not express this belief in the same manner as “pentecostals”, but it’s a core conviction.

+ We are Evangelical - we believe in a high view of the Christian Scriptures. The Bible is God’s irreplaceable and trustworthy self-revelation. It needs to be understood and interpreted in and through Christ and the teaching of the Christian tradition. We believe in the necessity of personal conversion and the need for mission.

+ We are Sacramental - we believe (alongside the entire historic Church up until the enlightenment) that materiality is but one part of a much more mysterious and irreducibly spiritual reality.

+ We are Contemplative - We believe in taking time for silence, stillness, and listening. We do not seek to entertain or fill every moment of our service with activity or music or words. Contemplative spirituality is never more relevant than now.

+ We are Activistic - We do not merely “warm pews”. However, the worship service is the beginning and end of every aspect of mission. We are sent out in the final movement of worship each Sunday, having been renewed as the Body of Christ. This means we are, in a sense, extending the incarnational work of Christ to our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. The movement isn’t complete until we come back the next week to be renewed yet again in our identity in Christ and our calling to be His witnesses to the world around us.

+ Catholicity: We believe the Church is MUCH bigger than our own congregation, our own denomination, our own geography, and even our own era. We celebrate the global & historic fullness of Christianity. The proper term for this is “catholicity” - which simply means from the whole. We do not see ourselves as having “progressed” beyond the faith of the historic Church; nor do we view our western, late-modern setting as normative. We are one part of a big family, one moment in a big story.

+ Multi-Generational Church: We are a cradle-to-grave congregation; we try to embody this multi-generational aspect in worship and in the relationships fostered within our church.

+ Multi-Cultural Church: We seek to celebrate and honor the full ethnic and cultural diversity of the Body of Christ. We do not presume that our culture or ethnicity is “normative” to Christianity. As a local church we seek to reflect to the best of our ability the diversity present in our local community (ethnic, cultural, class, education, etc.) without pretending that we are anything other than what we are.