We’re informal. We often start a few minutes late. We’re small. This isn’t a church with a big stage and lots of rows, separating those who get to speak and sing on stage from everyone else. Everyone–even the musicians and speaker–are on the same level, sharing the same semicircle of chairs and couches.

We’ll sing a range of songs including classic hymns, contemporary worship tunes, and original songs. We read scripture (We follow the lectionary for our preaching texts) and one of our elders or another church member will lead a dialogical sermon (a sermon integrating discussion). All together this will run about 75 minutes.

If you arrive early, it will likely feel a little awkward because we’re a small group, but you won’t miss any of the excellent music. If you come a bit late, you may feel more comfortable slipping in. Either is fine.

As a small church, we don’t have many official church programs or regular gatherings outside of Sunday night. We believe that the life of each Christian is the ministry of the church.  We encourage each member to be actively involved in their community, doing ministry in their world in ways that resonate with their heart and sense of God’s guidance.

As a church family, we support each other’s work of ministry through regular updates, prayer, and when appropriate participation and even financial support. In this way we’ve supported single moms, attended emotional growth and trauma recovery seminars together, provided needed groceries, walked in the Portland Cascade AIDS walk, participated in prayer vigils for our country, created and supported a Sewing class, funded therapy for people who needed it, prayed for healing, and even helped people get jobs. 

Our elder team is also available to meet for pastoral care, discipleship, coaching, and to make referrals for mental health care.

As a community of Jesus’ followers, we agree that Jesus is the source of our life and salvation, and that through Jesus’ life and death humanity was reconciled to God. This is the center point of our community. We consider all other questions of doctrine and practice to be secondary to this. We have decided that in every possible case we will not let differences of belief on secondary matters divide us as a community.

We are a part of the large stream of orthodox Christianity starting with the Apostles, defined in the Nicene creed, and developed over the two-thousand-year history of Christian theology. However, we don’t believe that we are saved by holding perfect theology, nor do we expect or require every member of our community to hold the same beliefs in order to participate or belong. Many of these things are discussed both in sermons and in our table conversations. Members hold a range of views about almost every topic.

For that reason, with the exception of the few areas laid out in our Positions page, we’ve chosen not to make public statements about most matters of doctrine and practice.

We know that people who are thinking about visiting a church often “pre-qualify” their visit by reviewing the church website. This is convenient and safe for visitors. But it also fails to recognize that all theology (the thinking we do about God and humanity’s relationship to God) is done in community.  Our experience is that matters of faith and practice are best discussed with the accountability of face-to-face conversation and under the banner of mutual care. So, we don’t make many blanket statements online. We encourage you to get to know us in person.

However, we understand that there are certain topics that hold great weight. It’s not fair or loving to set up a situation where someone attends a new church for weeks building relationships before discovering that the church has a position or policy that is directly hurtful to them. As an expression of care, we’ve decided to share official statements on three topics on our Positions page.