Holy Scripture is “God’s Word written.” It contains all things necessary for salvation and is God’s revealed word. Within its pages we are shown “what we ought to do, and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God’s hands at length.” The Church’s historic guidance––chiefly preserved in the Apostles, Nicean, and Athanasian Creeds––informs our reading of Holy Scripture. We do not “ordain anything contrary to God’s Word written, nor expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.”

Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, VI, XX, and XXXIV.

Prayer is at the center of our life in Christ, which is why the Anglican tradition places prayer in the center of our worship. Informed by the Book of Common Prayer, Anglican spirituality includes public worship (Holy Communion), daily praise and intercession (the Daily Office), and contemplative devotional practices (Private Prayer). We believe that the mission of the church not only begins with prayer, but is an invitation into the Church’s life of prayer. 

Discipleship is about learning to follow Jesus and no one follows Jesus alone. We are commanded to make disciples by baptizing and teaching others all about Jesus. We all need help knowing who Jesus is and what it looks like for us to follow him in the way he has made us. This does not happen in a vacuum; we need one another. We all have a responsibility to surround ourselves with those who know Christ better than us and to introduce him to those who don’t know him as well as we do.

“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25:35). As this quote from St. Benedict says so well, hospitality is a biblical and tangible way to communicate the love of Christ to neighbor and stranger alike. Whether by welcoming strangers in line at the grocery store or by receiving a new friend at the dinner table, we acknowledge the image of God in all people by inviting them into our ordinary lives.

As St. James has said, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (1:27). Not only has Christ delivered us from sin and death, he continues to care for our every bodily need. The mercy we receive in Jesus is the mercy we long to share with those in our community who are in need. Our mission includes the proclamation of the good news, but it also requires meeting the bodily needs of our community (1 John 3:17).

Everything we have is a gift given us by God. This is the case for every resource at our disposal from our finances to our time. Every human being will be held accountable for how he or she has stewarded every good and perfect gift given us from the Father of lights (Jas. 1:17). We desire to take stock of these gifts so that we might not hoard them for ourselves, but freely return them to the Lord and give generously to all in need. “For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you” (1 Chron. 29:13).