What We Believe

“The church… stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ.”

-Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character

We exist to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ with our lips and in our lives for the life of San Antonio and the world.

Worship

Human beings are made to worship. All people worship; the only questions are, what? whom? And how? We worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ and proclaimed in The Great Tradition of the church. Our worship is joyful and reverent, ancient and contemporary. We trust that God speaks by His Spirit in the reading and preaching of Scripture. We receive ordinary bread and wine each week as Christ’s promised presence. For us, this ancient liturgy is not a rote ritual but a transformational participation in God’s life and love.

Wisdom

Human beings are made in God’s image to convey his wisdom. Though sin distorts that image and deforms our habits into the foolishness of the world, Jesus is graciously renewing us back into God’s glorious image. We believe God wants to transform everyone to live and love like Jesus—the wisdom of God. This does not happen spontaneously, but through the intentional ordering of our habits. God wants to re-order our habits of time, attention, relationship, and money so that we might become a people of true wisdom.

Welcome

Human beings are made to be known and loved in community. Jesus is the great gatherer who breaks down the walls of hostility, making it possible for disparate peoples to be one united body. Christ Church is seeking to be such a community, not merely an affinity of party or class. Though we are imperfect, we seek to retrieve The Great Tradition’s commitment to reconciliation and welcome, such that all people would encounter and follow the risen Christ together.

Witness

Human beings are made to be on mission. Before Jesus ascended to His Heavenly throne, He commissioned His apostles, “you will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). As heirs of the apostles, we share in this mission to bear witness to the gracious rule of Christ our King. He is a king unlike any other – whose throne is a cross and whose reign knows no end.  We seek to embody his rule in the way Christians have for centuries: “by doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God” (Micah 6:8).

• We believe the good news that God is making all things new in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through His Church and by His Spirit.
• We worship one God in three Persons, praying with the Book of Common Prayer to the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit.
• We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the revealed Word of God containing all things necessary to salvation.
• We take part in the Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself, through the ministry of the apostolic orders.
• We are an integral part of the one Body of Christ composed of Churches which, united under the headship of Jesus, are in the fellowship of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church throughout the ages.
• We receive the one Faith revealed in Holy Scripture, and defined in the ecumenical creeds from The Great Tradition of the Church.
• We belong to the worldwide Anglican Communion under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
• We pray for the healing of the Church’s sad divisions and for the reunification of the Body of Christ.