Who We Are
We are four generations of Christians seeking together to grow deeper in Christ to reach farther in love.
Four generations of Christians
We are a truly multi-generational congregation that delights in the blessing and challenge of four generations worshipping, learning, living, and serving together.
Seeking together
We are seekers, filled with questions, coming from many backgrounds, perspectives, school districts, communities, but united by our common faith in Jesus Christ and our desire to discern and do God’s will.
To grow deeper in Christ
We seek to deepen our friendship with Christ, so that his image can grow more visible in us. Spiritual formation can happen at age 3 or 13 or 93; it can happen in small groups or classrooms, on a construction site or in the kitchen, and around here, by God’s grace, it does – for children, youth and adults.
To reach farther in love
“God calls us to be the church, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil.” (Iona Abbey Worship Book) So we are always listening for directions about where God wants us to go and what God wants us to do in our neighborhood, in our town, in our nation, and in our world.
To that end, in 2020, the Session adopted this statement:
Jesus called us to “love our neighbors as ourselves” (Mark 12:31). He set his own love as the standard with the command to “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). We believe that acceptance of and commitment to this commandment is essential to being true followers of Christ and that we should aspire to celebrate the full and rich diversity of all God’s children. Therefore, we reject any words or actions that separate us on the grounds of race, color and ethnicity or that perpetuate alienation, hatred and enmity. (Belhar Confession, 1982). We recognize as a people we are not yet who we want to be but commit ourselves to the journey that embraces our common humanity as we listen, learn, and grow together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
What We Believe
We are not alone.
We live in God’s world.
We believe in God, who has created and is still creating,
Who has come in Jesus to reconcile and make all things new.
We trust God, who calls us to be the church:
To celebrate God’s presence,
To live with respect for creation,
To love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil,
To proclaim Jesus, crucified, dead, and risen,
Our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us!
We are not alone.
These words from The Iona Community articulate what we believe about who we are, and who we are called to be as Christians and as a community of faith. As a congregation, we are not an island but are connected to the greater church centered in Jesus Christ.
We are part of the Protestant Reformed branch of that family tree that understands that the church is “reformed and always being reformed.” We understand that the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are the inspired Word of God and therefore our chief authority. But we also understand that as sinful and fallible human beings, our understanding of God’s truth and God’s ways is always incomplete. We believe that God is still teaching us and forming us. God isn’t finished with us yet!
Within that Reformed tradition, we are a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). To find out more about the beliefs of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., you can read the 12 historic creeds and confessions dating from the first century to the twentieth century that our denomination has adopted. Click here for PCUSA Book of Confessions Part I. These creeds and confessions are always subordinate to the Bible, but they give us an opportunity to listen to Christians from the past, and they serve as guides for our beliefs and actions.
You can find out more about what our denomination is doing around the world at https://www.pcusa.org/.