What We Believe - Why We Gather
God is the source of all life and we gather together as a community of believers to receive and acknowledge God's grace toward us, especially the gift of redemption through Jesus Christ.
We attend church regularly to have fellowship with others who worship Jesus as Lord and Saviour, to hear the Word of God, to receive God's grace through the sacrament of Holy Communion, and to pray for one another and for the world. In this way we receive the inspiration, edification, and spiritual food we need to help us to be instruments of God's love and goodness in our daily lives.
And by doing this we affirm that the truths handed down to us from ancient times by trustworthy witnesses continue to provide us with a positive, reasonable and relevant way of living in the world of the 21st century.
Confession of Faith
As a member church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), we affirm the Confession of Faith from the Constitution of the ELCA, which says in part:
"This church confesses the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This church confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the Gospel as the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.
- Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, through whom everything was made and through whose life, death, and resurrection God fashions a new creation.
- The proclamation of God’s message to us as both Law and Gospel is the Word of God, revealing judgment and mercy through word and deed, beginning with the Word in creation, continuing in the history of Israel, and centering in all its fullness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
- The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the written Word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.
This church accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life.
This church accepts the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this church.
This church confesses the Gospel, recorded in the Holy Scripture and confessed in the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran confessional writings, as the power of God to create and sustain the Church for God’s mission in the world."
The Father
We believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
- We acknowledge the reality of an infinite personal being who is present in the universe, but who also transcends it.
- We affirm that this ultimate being brought the universe into existence, but did not then abandon it, but remains active within it even now.
- Hence we affirm that the world is a good place.
- We also affirm that it is humanity's privilege and responsibility to care for this world and for each other.
- But we acknowledge that we as humans sometimes fail to carry out our responsibilities, and in so doing we break faith with God, with each other, and with the earth.
- When we do this we cut ourselves off from the very source of life, and such a choice can only lead to death.
- But God has not abandoned humanity, either, but in infinite love has lived among us so that our life may be restored.
The Son
We believe in Jesus Christ,
God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
- We affirm that one human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and died 2000 years ago, embodied for us the presence of God within our world.
- We accept the witness of the earliest Christians who recorded in the four canonical Gospels what they themselves had seen and experienced, who affirm that:
- Jesus, unique among all human beings, is fully divine, existing eternally with the Father, yet fully human, the Messiah (the Christ, the Anointed One) whose coming was promised by the ancient Hebrew prophets.
- Jesus, again uniquely, was conceived in a miraculous manner through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
- Jesus, during his life on earth, demonstrated the love of God through his teaching and through his acts of mercy and of healing.
- Jesus, although sinless, took upon himself the full weight of the evil which humanity has worked in the world, accepting on our behalf a death he did not deserve.
- Jesus, in dying on our behalf, has given us his own divine life so that humanity's rejection of God may be reversed and our intended life and proper relationships with God, each other, and the earth may be restored.
- Above all, we accept the witness of the Gospels that Jesus physically rose from the dead and remains alive to this day, with a body which transcends normal existence.
- Although no longer physically present among us on the earth, Jesus remains with us through the Holy Spirit and through the sacraments of the Church, but he has also promised to return at God's appointed time to set all things ultimately right.
- In rising from the dead, Jesus has broken the hold death has over us, making it possible for us to also rise from death when he returns.
The Holy Spirit
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
- We acknowledge the mystery of a triune God, greater than human comprehension, three distinct personalities within one single, eternal divine being, a community of love, who provides the basis and example for our own human relationships.
- We recognise the workings of the Holy Spirit within our world as the ongoing presence of God and of Jesus among us today.
- We as Christians make up the Church, the community which seeks to live as the Body of Christ, the representatives of Jesus in the world, who continue to carry out his ministry of love, mercy and reconciliation to all of humanity and to all of creation.
- We affirm the promise of God that ultimately all will be made right within the good created world, and that our life in union with the divine Trinity will continue throughout eternity.