We believe that, as Brian McLaren so wonderfully phrases it, “the church… must be above all a school of love.” Worship, mission, biblical study, evangelism, and all else we can do as a church have their origins and fulfillment in love. More specifically, in our ability to hold loving relationship between God, self, and other. Our focus in “doing church,” then, is to be a place for people to gather in the Spirit of God, to explore our spirits together, and to strengthen our practice of engaging in loving relationship, according to the example of the Christ.
While we gather to look deeply at our personal spirituality, and to do so in the context of an intentional community, this is not intended to be the extent of our faith lives. The inward exploration is always meant to lead to outward action. That is, we don’t work on our own spiritual practices of loving relationship just for self-improvement. We work on these spiritual practices with the intention that they will move all that we do toward living closer to the Christ’s Way in the world. By learning better how to meet others in loving relationship as the Christ does, we are aware that all of our interactions with others, and perhaps all that we do, is done with greater love. As we do our spiritual work, and are intentional about how we interact with the world, our inward work of learning to relate like Jesus improves our outward expressions of love for all of God’s creation.