What We Believe

While gathering together to begin the process of writing our own statement of faith, we realized that, putting our beliefs down in writing was like drawing a line in the sand.  Some members of the community would find themselves able to say "Yes, I believe that," while others would not.  Faith statements have done that since the beginning of time, dividing communities, with stark clarity, into those who belonged and those who did not.  That wasn't what we wanted.

In the early days following the death of Jesus, communities were forming that were choosing to live differently from the societies around them. They shared what they had. They went into areas of disease, at great risk, and worked with the dying. They went against family wishes in order to live up to the ideas of love that they knew. They became known as Christians for how they lived.

And that's how we want to be known as Christians – not for what we believe, but for how we live. So we created a document we call VisionWorks to help us focus on the question, "How do we want to live?" It is a statement of our values and a challenge to us, each and every day. After all, being Christian shouldn't stop at what you believe.