Our Values
Rather than doctrine insisting on teachings central to a particular expression of Christian faith, we embrace values embodied in the life of Jesus. Our emphasis on values as opposed to teachings grounds our community in Jesus’ essence and character.
Equity
Jesus’ way of love subverted stigmas and opened access in his day—access to community, daily bread, healing, justice, and even God’s own self. We therefore value equity. We grieve unfairness and barriers in our society and in our own body. We seek to upend, reenvision, and reconstruct systems in order to help foster voice, volition, and access.
A vital outflow of our value of equity, is working against racism.
Gratitude
Jesus lived life in surrender and gratitude before the one in whom he moved and breathed and had his being. We therefore value this posture of living—in humble surrender and joyful gratitude before the ground of our being.
Inclusion
Jesus crossed all kinds of borders and barriers, especially to include the outcast and irreligious. We therefore value making room to include a diversity of backgrounds, views, and convictions, and especially those who are marginalized.
Integration
Jesus was present to every person and every moment—from the innocent to the unnoticed, from the wilderness to the cross. He knew that even the outcast, even shadows, have a place. We therefore value embracing every person and engaging every moment, trusting that everything belongs.
Peace
Through generous life and sacrificial death, Jesus revealed a way of being in the world that culminates in the end of violence, brokenness, and suffering. We therefore value all that promotes peace in every form—personal, interpersonal, national, global, even cosmic.
Renewal
Jesus facilitated renewal through acts of justice, mercy, healing, and love. This renewal is personal—it is also relational, societal, and ecological. We therefore value renewing, because renewal of any kind is participation with God, who is making all things new.
Transformation
Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead to life, and spoke of being born anew. He exhorted all to grow, and his death and rising embodies the pattern of God’s transformational activity in the world. We therefore value awakening, transforming, and becoming truly living beings.