Church

I am a member of the United Church of Canada. I've been thinking a lot about church in recent weeks as we've moved and I've been looking for a new spiritual home in our new city. I'm not big on evangelizing or proseletyzing; living in a multicultural society, and particularly in a mixed-faith family, it's neither appropriate nor fair a lot of the time. But it's also not something I would ever want to hide, and since with my blog you have the choice of reading or not, watching the videos I post or not, checking out the photos I post or not, I figure this isn't a bad place to put up this link to a Youtube video (click here).

It is nothing special, in a way; no fancy graphics or production values. It's a handheld cam video at a multicultural conference where they recite our church's 'New Creed' (now going on 20 years in action lol). And that creed is special; people sometimes accuse the United Church (and by extension myself) of sort of half-hearted Christianity; we hesitate to wholeheartedly endorse the literal concepts of Christianity (the ressurection etc.); but I think this creed embodies what the church is trying to do; we DO believe in Christian precepts. But as people, we will always stumble in that belief; we will always question. Our job as a community is to help one another on that journey of faith. The language is not narrow and exclusionary so that perhaps more open-minded or questioning Christians will feel threatened by it; nor is it so wishy-washy that those more certain in their faith will feel it 'doesn't count' somehow.

When someone asks me what it means to be a Christian and a churchgoer, I usually point to this creed. I hope and think it has something for every Christian to believe in. :)

A NEW CREED:

We are not alone.

We live in God's world.

We believe in God:

who has created and is creating,

who has come in Jesus,

the Word made flesh,

to reconcile and make new,

who works in us and others

by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the Church:

to celebrate God's presence,

to live with respect in Creation,

to love and serve others,

to seek justice and resist evil,

to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,

our judge and our hope,

In life, in death, in life beyond death,

God is with us. We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.