Everything is broken.

Everything, it seems, is broken. Because of our own shame, we have run away from God, and broken that relationship. We ourselves are broken—and we spend millions of dollars in therapy every year trying heal ourselves. Our relationships with each other are broken—we are at war with other countries, there is tension between religions and people of various ethnicities, we are sometimes even estranged from our own familiy members. And global warming is only the latest confirmation that our relationship with the earth is broken.

 

God's dream is to heal everything broken.

Our faith tells us that brokenness is a temporary situation, and that God will eventually heal everything. This is our hope as Christians, and our mission is to celebrate, facilitate, and participate in that healing. 

 

We strive for healing in four directions.

• First, we want to heal our relationship with God. Healing from shame and restoring our connection to God is the key to healing everything else, because only God can truly heal. 

• Once we have healed our relationship with God, then with God's help we can be healed ourselves—our personal wounding and religious wounding, and make a commitment to responsible self care.

• We can also work toward healing our relationships with others—working for peace and justice, and doing the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation between people, between religions, between nations.

• We also commit ourselves to right relationship with the earth and all her creatures—to the healing of soil and sea and air. This is why we welcome pets to our services—to remind us that God's gifts are not just for humans alone, but for all creatures.

 

Healing comes in community.

We work on our own healing and the healing of others by joining in community. In worship, we heal our relationships with God. In our interactions with one another, we inevitably rub each other the wrong way and hurt one another, and so we practice forgiveness and diversity. Together, we pool our efforts to bring healing to the world.