I am new here...
Welcome! We’re glad you’re here.
Now that you’re here, relax. You’re with friends. Even if you’ve never been in a church building or part of a church community before, we want you to feel at ease, and at home.
No matter what you’ve done, who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
Who we are
We are bound together by our covenants with God and each other, following Jesus, sharing in community, and committed to living Christ into the world. Church is not a building, or an event during the week. Church is a way of being – it is a set of relationships with God and other people.
We are guided by unity of purpose, rather than unity of belief or lifestyle. Our tradition has a phrase for this: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.” As a result, we are computer geeks and soccer moms, Democrats and Republicans and Green, omnivores and vegetarians, tattooed and straight-laced, gay families and straight singles. We love rock and Bach, and don’t believe that either is uniquely suited to worshipping God.
Our goal is that you know
- that you are a valued and beloved child of God, just as you are, and
- that God loves you too much to leave you just as you are.
For us, being a church means
- practicing and following the Way of Jesus;
- in close community with a tribe of others — twos and threes and more;
- sharing the activities and word of love, and your experience of God, with others who need it;
- whether you are here or not.
What we believe
We believe in a real faith for real lives. We believe that following Jesus, and accepting him as Christ – as messiah and as Lord over our lives – is a life-giving choice. It is a choice to discover God through the unique relationship of God to Jesus, the relationship of a parent to an only and beloved son. We take joy in knowing God in our relationship with Jesus, and are humbled by all that we do not yet know about the God we love and who loves us and others.
What we do
We gather as the whole church for communal worship on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at 400 W. Campbell Ave. in Campbell. Regular communal worship is a central spiritual practice: by scheduling our lives around that time, and dedicating it to celebration, prayer, study, and communion, we remind ourselves to put God first all through the week. (Plus, it’s fun – everyone comes home!)
It’s great to be with a lot of other people for worship, but that’s not all being church is about. Jesus calls us to live lives of trust, depth, risk and vulnerability, and that works out best in small-scale, close relationships.
We join in twos and threes for spiritual friendships, accountability partnerships, and prayer triads. These relationships of honesty and support build our strength, and deepen our connections.
Small groups and ministry teams emerge as people discover and use their spiritual gifts, or feel a tug to learn more about the God we love. Working together, we use our gifts to better the world, and help others discover the transformational power of God’s love.
As individuals and families, we utilize ancient and traditional spiritual practices to infuse our daily lives with an awareness and love of God.