What We Believe
We believe God’s love story is presented in the Scriptures, aka the Bible. Scripture is the norm of our faith and life. We believe scripture is our primary source of knowing what God has done, is doing, and is yet to do. Scripture should be faithfully examined in a community, which we do through a four-year cycle of readings in the Narrative Lectionary -- designed to cover the entire narrative arc of scripture and, particularly, God's work in and intent for our world.
We call this community the church. The church is not a building, a club, or a location. The church is the gathered people of every time and every place. The church is a gift of God to gather, teach, encourage, and then send believers into mission. We believe Jesus came not just to save us in the next life, but to be transformed in this life as well. No building could ever hope to contain all of that.
We believe God has been revealed through history. The church is connected by a great web of people and theologians who have wrestled with God and what we know about God. We believe our communal history has much to teach us about who God is today. One theologian from the ancient church named Martin Luther called the church to depend solely on God for our salvation - not on our works, what we say, what we do, or by any of our actions. Therefore we are linked to our tribe in this great web of faith called Lutheran--one expression of many in the Christian church. Luther called the church to always be reforming and never get too comfortable. Sometimes following Jesus can be very uncomfortable, but, hey, that's part of the journey.
Lutherans believe in the Triune God - Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. God created and loves all of creation--the earth, the seas and all of the world’s inhabitants. We believe that our Redeemer - God's Son, Jesus Christ - transforms lives through his death on the cross and his new life, and we trust that our Sustainer - God's Holy Spirit - is active in the world. We are part of God’s unfolding plan. When we gather for worship, we connect with believers everywhere. When we study the Bible or hear God’s word in worship, we are drawn more deeply into God’s own saving story.
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