Our Faith
To profess our faith in God as a community is to tell His story of hope and redemption for the entire world. His story is a movement from creation to re-creation, and each of us has a role in that story. The Scriptures tell that story far better than we ever could and we first point you to them.
As a campus ministry of the Lutheran Church, our people accept and teach the Bible-based teachings of Martin Luther that inspired the reformation of the Christian Church in the 16th century. The teaching of Luther and the reformers can be summarized in three short phrases: Grace alone, Faith alone, Scripture alone. It is with that same evangelical spirit that we find our passion and mission to bring the Gospel to people.
It is also true that the Church throughout centuries has been asked to tell the story of God, and thus teach theology, and their ancient words have proven valuable. It is the words of the ancient creeds (especially the Apostles’ and Nicene) that capture in a far better way than we ever could the historic Christian faith.
Just like in the historic creeds of the Church, what we believe about God is at the heart of what we believe also about each other, ourselves, and creation: that everything is part of the one great story of the Trinity. We believe God inspired the authors of Scripture by his Spirit to speak to all generations of believers, including us today. His story in Scripture is our story.
In the beginning God created all things good. He was then and always will be in a communal relationship with Himself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God created people in His image to live in fellowship with Him, each other, and creation around them. Unfortunately, the fracturing of each of those relationships is also a part of the story. When humanity was first tempted, darkness and evil entered the story and are now parts of the world. We see the results of this brokenness physically, emotionally and spiritually (cancer, car wreaks, catastrophes, depression, isolation, idolatry, divorce, death, etc.). The Scriptures tell the story of all our pain when God grieves with mankind about the results of sin.
We also believe that God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay. His promise to restore the broken world was immediate. His promise included the choosing of a special people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the world. God promised to bless them as a nation so that through them all nations would be blessed. Throughout the story of Abraham’s people, even subversive acts of unfaithfulness could not sway God’s commitment to His promise.
Whether as nomads or as a nation in the Promised Land, their identity and purpose was bound to their calling to embody the living God to other nations. Although there are beautiful moments in the Scriptures where they lived out their divine calling, they repeatedly disobeyed, flirted with foreign gods, abused the poor, and mistreated foreigners. The prophetic voices that emerge from the Scriptures tell of God’s heart for life, warn the people of abuses, and point to a better future.
We believe God’s heart for a better future for all creation found fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah. Jesus preached good news to the poor, set captives free, and proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God to our fractured world. He and his message were rejected by many as he confronted the oppressive nature of the religious elite and the empire of Rome. Yet his path of suffering, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection has brought hope to all creation.
God is now reconciling us to each other, ourselves, and creation. The Spirit of God affirms as children of God all those who trust Jesus. The church is rooted and grounded in Christ, practicing spiritual disciplines and celebrating Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The church is a global and local expression of living out the way of Jesus through love, peace, sacrifice, and healing as we embody the resurrected Christ, who lives in and through us, to a broken and hurting world.
We believe the day is coming when Jesus will return to judge the world, bringing an end to injustice and restoring all things to God’s original design. On that day we will replace weapons with shovels and paint brushes (our God is a God of gardens and beauty). On that day there will be no more death, no more tears. Our relationships with God, eachother, and creation will be whole. This is what we long for. We, with the Church around the world, seek to live in that reality now. Come here and be loved by Jesus with us.