We gather around the table Christ has prepared to share our hope in Him with one another and our neighbor.

Here’s what that means.

 

We gather around the table Christ has prepared…

Worship is a key part of our identity. It is what we do as the Church; we cannot fulfill our purpose without continuing to gather each and every week to celebrate what God has done for us in Word and Sacrament. That is why we first say “the table Christ has prepared.” The gospel is all about what God has done, not what we have done. He is with us.

But we gather around other tables as well – in picnics, special events, small groups, etc. We don’t celebrate the Eucharist in all of those settings, but what we do on Sundays transforms our experience of each of those smaller gatherings. In a way, each of them is an echo of the Eucharist - the Lord’s Supper - just as the Eucharist is an echo of the feast we will one day share in the presence of God.

…to share our hope in Him with one another…

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Hope is this community’s chief trait, hope that Jesus Christ gives us. In this hope we see that our present, finite vision and experience of life is not all there is. We have hope that we will one day share in His perfected glory and that we can change for the better, reflecting His glory here and now. We pronounce that hope every time we share the Lord’s Supper together.

This is also an implicit commitment to the proclamation of the gospel. We don’t gather together because we like each other (though we do like each other!) or because it’s fun (though we do revel in the joy of our worship gathering!). We gather together because of what God has done for us.

This reminds us as well that our worship is not a passive activity. It’s not a show that the clergy and staff put on every week. You have a responsibility every time you gather with us: to help us proclaim the good news of what Christ has done.

…And Our neighbor. 

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The good news is not just for us. We have a responsibility to invite others into our gatherings and to carry the good news out into the world.

We are not a “Sunday morning only” crowd. By seeking God together, we develop intentional communities that serve our neighbors and the world. In this process we cultivate relationships that allow each other to speak the Word of God into each others’ lives. 

The Bible uses the imagery of iron sharpening iron to describe how community refines us. This is the hot crucible where Christ’s life-renovating work happens. And as it happens, we see God’s glory reflected more and more in the faces of our community. 

We seek to engage in the final work and mission that Jesus Christ left for His followers when he said, “go and make disciples for me from all the peoples of the earth” (Matthew 28:19). 

We are meant to proclaim – in word and deed – the Good News of God’s Kingdom and His reconciling Love in our community and throughout the world. While worship is the only activity of the Church that lasts into eternity, mission is the only activity that can only be done here and now. This is where we take the life changing work that Jesus is doing in our lives and share it with others, inviting them to come and be changed too and extend it to the world.

OUR CORE VALUES

  • It’s no accident that we use the Table as our central metaphor. Christ has extended His invitation to all people, and we extend it in turn - in our Sunday gatherings and in the rest of our lives. We not only enjoy but want to invite one another into our lives, because again: gathering is not just about food and fun - it is about reminding one another of the hope we have in Christ.

  • In this context, “integrity” means “commitment to the gospel.” We want to talk about real hope, not false hope. And if this is really where our hope lies, it is going to be reflected in our worship on Sunday morning and our lives during the rest of the week.

  • As a response to the gospel and a sign of where our hope truly lies, we will be generous. This posture is both counter-cultural in a world that often puts hope in material possessions, and an outpouring, in love, of the hope we have been given.

  • When we celebrate what Christ has done for us, it is worth it to do it well. This is particularly expressed in the beauty of our worship, but we are also a people who value beauty. God has made beautiful things out of us, and we in turn are a community with a deep sense of His beauty in both the simple and the grand spaces of life and worship.