WE BELIEVE...
With our Congregational history, we continue to love the individual as he or she practices his/her faith. As pastor, I don’t tout the “party line” for “all” to believe in and repeat verbatim because in the UCC, we do not have not official party line.
Freedom of Choice
Nationally, the UCC can be seen a liberal denomination, but not all UCC churches are liberal. We have conservative-minded members in our church as well as liberal thinking ones. This beauty of diversity is true of any congregation in any denomination; we are just outright with our polity (the way our church is set up).
Collection of Perspectives
If you are looking for a single answer to what “we” believe, you’ll never find it here. That is not escapism or a willingness to lean into an “anything goes” theology; instead, I like to think we are like the Gospel writers. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all lifted different vantage points, spiritual locations, and theological agendas when telling us the story of our Savior, Jesus. We do the same.
Collective Learning
We do not “dummy down” or simplify religion. As pastor, I don’t dispense information others are expected to learn and repeat in a cookie-cutter way. Rather, we co-learn from each other by our deliberate attention to the Advocate Jesus promised us, the Holy Spirit. Holding the Word of God as sacred, historic, truthful, life-sustaining and guiding, we journey together with what Old and New Testament scripture holds for us collectively and as individuals. In short, we learn the Word of God from (and with) each other because we who love God first and neighbor second are the hands and feet of Jesus today.
Looking for more information on the history of UCC? Check out:
www.ucc.org/about-us_short-course
and
www.patheos.com/library/united-church-of-christcongregationalism
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
— Ephesians 2:10