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Our Vision To be the Church that Jesus wants us to be, reflecting His love, welcoming each individual into life with Him and actively reaching out to the world around us. |
Our Purpose To be servants of Jesus, putting His love into action by magnifying God's Name, proclaiming God's Word, and equipping God's people for ministry and caring for God's World. |
We are Your Neighbors We live throughout this area and all over the country and the world. Today there are more than 2.8 million members in 7,000 parishes and missions in the United States. The Episcopal Church in the United States is part of the Worldwide Anglican Communion. |
We are a Mixed Bag Our membership stretches from royalty to the common man, from rich to poor, and across all races and nationalities. Someone once defined the Episcopal Church as, “Here comes everybody". |
We are the Body We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, God in the flesh. We believe that He died to save us from sin and rose to gain us eternal life. This is not only because Jesus is our Lord and Savior or only because we are His disciples and close friends. We also believe that, since Jesus rose from the dead, He is now connected to us through His Holy Spirit. We call this fantastic union the "mystical body" of which Christ is the head and the Episcopal Church is our expression of the body. |
We are a People of the Book We believe that God has intentionally revealed Himself to us in Holy Scripture, and that the Bible is a grand and wonderful story about both God and His people. This story begins with the creation of the world and centers on a bold and necessary intervention on the part of that same Creator who came into this world to accomplish the awesome task of restoration. This Creator will bring His creation to its intended perfection at the end of the age. A great part of this story is that we are invited and called to be involved in it our-selves, both intimately and personally. |
We are a Sacramental People Sacraments are signs of God's grace, signs of God's special presence. Jesus is the most important sign of God the Father: God in flesh. We believe that God is also present in obvious, powerful ways at important events in our lives. We celebrate this graceful presence in the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Forgiveness, Eucharist, Marriage, Ministry and Healing in Christ. We affirm that God is everywhere at all times, but, by the celebration of these sacramental events, we call the whole Church, all over the world, to attend to His presence at these points in life. |
We are a Heavenly People We believe in everlasting life. We view heaven as a joyous place, a banquet at which God is our host, Jesus our waiter, and a crowd of angels our entertainers. Our celebration will include both our friends and past enemies. We believe that getting into heaven is both by God's grace and our chief purpose. We also believe that if getting into heaven is our first goal, then getting heaven into us is our second. |
| We are a People of Tradition We trace our lineage back to Adam and Eve. We do not face each question as if we have learned nothing from experience. We combine the wisdom of scripture, reason, tradition and the experience of our lives with God to give us respect for the past, openness to the future and hope in the present. |
| We are a People of Values In accordance with the promise of Jesus, we expect even greater things in the future. At the same time, we hold on to all that is true and good. We believe that some values should never be compromised and we guard them with our lives. |