What are we here for?

God’s love is for everyone. And yet, historically and presently, the church has left so many people out.

Our mission is to welcome all people to experience God’s love — all ages, genders, cultures, colors, sexual orientations, abilities — especially anyone who has ever not been accepted for who they are at church.

For us the heart of the Gospel is this: God loves you for exactly who are and who you are becoming, and nothing you or anyone else can do or say will ever change that. Nothing on heaven or earth can separate you from God’s love. God is calling you to love and be loved in community, and we would be proud to have you be part of ours. This has always been true; we just get to share the news and live in response to it.

We experience God’s love in worship, relationships, scripture, community, serving, and many other ways — but the mission is always the same. Inversely, our mission is also to empower people to live out God’s love with their words and actions so that others might experience God’s love too. How? See our strategy below.

Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love: to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

God calls us to love and be loved. It’s that simple, and that hard. That’s our mission.

how do we accomplish this mission?

We don’t experience and live out God’s love in a vacuum.

We experience and live out God’s love in community. By welcoming everyone to worship God together; by building genuine relationships that cross generations and socioeconomic backgrounds; by walking with and caring for people; by cultivating a community in which all voices matter; by teaching an inclusive faith that reflects all God’s people.

This embodiment of God’s love in real community — that’s what translates our mission from words to action, and not just a one-time action, but a dynamic relationship with God and the people around us.

A community defined by God’s love can mean a shift of perspective. When we volunteer to welcome or serve a meal, it’s not about performing a role. It’s about being a community. Being open to relationship. Seeing people in the fullness of who they are. There’s no hierarchy, insiders, or outsiders in God’s kingdom. We all belong.

As our guide, we look to the example of Jesus. Jesus spent his entire ministry erasing barriers and inviting people in. Jesus loved his disciples, but he also challenged them to expand the boundaries of who and how they loved.

We say our strategy is to “practice” authentic community because we can't perfect it, but it is in trying that we grow, and God works in us and through us. Welcoming everyone to experience and live out God’s love in tangible ways with real people is never straightforward or easy. But we can try, practice, learn, get better, knowing each time we stumble we are met with God’s unconditional love.

It’s in the practice that our faith grows, and our community grows. This is what we mean by practicing our faith. And this is how we grow our mission together.

What’s our end goal here?

Why this mission and strategy? This is our best effort at opening our lives and community to the Holy Spirit working in us and through us.

We believe experiencing God’s love and living out God’s love can transform lives and communities. We hope God works through us to transform people, our community, and the world to be more loving, more loved, more just, and more joyful.

Transformation can be thorough or dramatic without being huge. It comes in many forms: renewal, empowerment, hope, baptism, relationship, discipleship. It’s the butterfly effect. We share God’s love one person and one interaction at time, in faith that through us, God is transforming the world toward love, justice, joy, and peace.