About Us
Welcome to our website. We hope you find information that helps you on your spiritual journey, connecting to God, others and your True Self. Our church is blessed by the presence of many caring, faithful, and talented members. As our bodies have many members, with different functions, so too, does the church. Our adult members are called “covenant members” because they have covenanted publicly, usually during a worship service. Many in our community are children and teenagers who may or may not have been baptized but have not yet been given an opportunity to confirm your faith (we usually wait until a young person has gone through a year-long confirmation program, 9th grade and up). Others are “friends” — either having visited for years and years but never officially “joined,” or perhaps just walked through our doors recently, perhaps at Easter or Christmas Eve.
Our “avowed purposed includes worshiping God, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, celebrating the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, striving for justice and peace, and desiring Christian fellowship and unity within our church and the Church Universal. We seek to know the will of God as taught in the Holy Scriptures, and in our purpose to walk in the ways of the Lord, made known and to be made known to us.”
While the governance of our church is vested in its members, we look to Jesus Christ as the head of the church. A member is, according to the Constitution, “any person who expresses a desire and intention to live the Christian life and to share in the responsibilities of church membership may become a member of this church.”
Our Constitution does not specifically spell out the responsibilities of membership. But I’ll share with you what we offer in our Newcomers Classes about the “marks of discipleship”:
– daily prayer
– weekly worship
– regular study of the scriptures
– giving of money
– service (sharing of time and talent) in and beyond the church
– being part of some small group or ministry in the church
If we believe what we say in the worship bulletin, then all the members are “ministers.” So then, we say to each member, what is your ministry going to be? Note: it does not have to be in the church building — it could be in the home, the workplace, the community, or the church.
In any case, these add up to being a WITNESS “to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best you are able” (from our UCC Book of Worship).
In Christ, Pastors Jim & Julia
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