WHAT WE BELIEVE

Trinity Lutheran Church is a member of a larger church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and we uphold the teachings of this body, a summary of which can be found here.

What else might we say? Perhaps this:

We believe first that the Triune God is the Creator of all things.  It might be worth noting that we do not see a conflict between faith and science when it comes to creation, but rather that the two stories at the beginning of the book of Genesis (1:1—2:3 and 2:4-25) reveal to us truths about God’s role in the creation of all that is, and that science helps us understand how it might all have unfolded.

We believe that it is, has been, and always will be the case that God deeply loves the whole of Creation, and desires to be in relationship with it, especially with human beings, who God created in the divine image.

We believe that, while made in God’s image, human beings are deeply broken, prone to missing the mark in terms of choosing to do what’s right, and in effect, that we are rebellious against our Creator.  The churchy word we use for this brokenness, this missing the mark, is ‘sin’, a word that we view as bigger than just our individual transgressions, but which also includes the brokenness of power structures, of systemic injustice, of the myriad ways we find to do harm to one another and to the world around us.  This brokenness is real, and we cannot save ourselves from it—it’s a web from which cannot untangle ourselves.

We believe that God chose to come among us, to take on our fleshly existence, to be incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Through his birth, his life, his teaching and healing, and his death and resurrection, Jesus brought God’s reign of justice and mercy close enough to touch.  By the death and resurrection of Jesus, God announces our complete restoration from our brokenness (the churchy word for this is ‘forgiveness’).  By Jesus’ death on the cross, God puts to death our rebellious-and-broken selves, and through Jesus’ rising from the empty tomb, God brings us to new life.  Following Jesus is about living that new life; we call it the baptismal life.

We believe that Jesus has poured out his Spirit upon us in the waters of baptism, breathing into us the breath of new life, so that together, in community, we can be the members of his body, participating in his work of restoration for the sake of a world that is deeply in need of healing. As Luther might say: This is most certainly true.