About | Grace Episcopal

Welcome from Fr. Tim

Since the beginning of Grace Church in 2014, our passion has been to create a generous and inclusive Christian community, where people from all sorts of backgrounds feel loved and valued by the church and by God! Our members include lifelong Episcopalians, former Roman Catholics, mainline denominations, and people brand new to the Christian faith. But most of our church grew up evangelical and charismatic and found a fresh approach to faith through Grace and the Episcopal Church.

My hope is that Grace is a place where you can grow in your faith, while connecting to God and others in meaningful ways. At Grace, we hope kids learn about a loving God and a develop a relationship with a loving Jesus. Likewise, we seek to equip adults to continue their spiritual growth and ask hard questions about faith and how to live it out in today’s world.

Explore our website, visit us online or in person, get to know our Rule of Life and our values, and think about whether God is leading you to make a home at Grace Church!

Wholehearted relationships with God and one another are the foundation of faith. It is summed up in Jesus' Commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37-38). The practice of authentic relationships means being open to a relationship with God, and then risking relationships with others. It means being your true self and accepting others where they are. It means allowing connection, trust, and grace to take root in your life. This is the beginning of a spiritual life in the way of Jesus Christ.

Authentic Relationships

Some ways to practice Authentic Relationships:

Attending Sunday Worship
Joining a Small Group
Being a part of our Discipleship Group
Participating in Community Events
Serving with a Ministry Team or Outreach Team

God hides the sacred in the ordinary. If we truly open our eyes, we see that all of life is Holy – not just church, but the commute, the dinner table, the kid's soccer game. Just as God takes ordinary bread and wine and makes them Holy Communion through Jesus' presence, God takes our ordinary lives and makes us Holy through the Spirit's presence. The life of faith is about recognizing this Holy and sacramental nature of our existence (Gen 28:16). Training our eyes to see life as a sacrament is essential to discipleship: it takes prayer, learning, self-reflection, and spiritual practices. The tradition of the church provides the roots for the Sacramental Life and the fellowship of the church encourages us in our growth in Christ (Acts 2:42).

Sacramental Lives

Some ways to practice Sacramental Lives:

Naming where you've seen God each day
Praying & reading Scripture daily
Being formed by Liturgy in worship
Attending Prayer School & Classes drawing on the tradition
Practicing Faith at Home

As we grow in faith and love of God, the Holy Spirit is at work making us a New Creation – a more generous, more loving, more giving, more accepting, more courageous people (2 Cor 5:17-20). Generous Hearts are lives that choose service over selfishness, forgiveness over blame, and love over fear. Living out a generous heart is an approach to life and relationships, as well as stewardship of our resources.

Generous Hearts

Some ways to practice Generous Hearts:

Encountering people with grace
Serving on a Ministry Team
Serving on an Outreach Team
Giving Tithes & Offerings

Our Rule of Life

What We Believe

God's love is for everyone. Really. No Exceptions.

We know this because of the Bible, which is a compilation of divinely inspired books, letters, psalms, poems, and other writings that comprise Holy Scripture. We read and study the Bible because through it God still speaks to us of his grace and love. We also know this because of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the primary revelation of God. If we want to know what God is like, all we have to do is look at Jesus. In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus shows us in tangible ways that God's love knows no bounds.

This is not just on the back of our t-shirts, but we do our best to live it out. There are all sorts of ways the church has made people feel like exceptions. But one important way that we live out God’s love is being an inclusive and affirming church for our LGBTQ+ siblings. We seek Christ in all people and understand that each of us is made in the image of God.

God has good news for everyone. Seriously. Everyone.

Gospel means "good news." The Good News Jesus taught is that the Kingdom of God is near and that we can begin living into this Kingdom today. The Kingdom of God is about rightly ordered relationships and justice and forgiveness and love. Living into Kingdom values and letting Jesus be our teacher is what the Christian life is about.

Through Jesus we can begin to see our sin and where we turn away from God. But, the grace of the Gospel is that we are God's beloved. God claims us despite our sin. Through Jesus' death and resurrection, we understand that God is doing a new thing in us – drawing us closer to him and making us a new creation (a more loving, forgiving, peaceful, and holy people). Our job as disciples of Jesus is to consent to God's work in us and partner with God for the Kingdom. By this redeeming work of God in Christ we find our lives changed and transformed.

We are rooted in the Episcopal tradition.

Our approach to the Christian faith is rooted in the Episcopal tradition. This is noticable right away in our Sunday worship, which uses the Book of Common Prayer. Call and response prayers and the flow of the seasons of the church year bind our common prayer together. If you are new to liturgy, we have lots of classes and opprotunies to learn about this dynamic and time tested way of prayer.

The sacraments of the church are central to our worship and practice of the faith. The sacraments are tangible signs of God's grace poured out on us. We recognize two principle sacraments of the church given to us by Jesus: Baptism and Eucharist (Holy Communion). Baptism is the first sacrament of the Christian faith, when we make a life-long commitment to following Jesus Christ. While a person is generally only baptized once, the Holy Eucharist happens every week! In the Eucharist Jesus is present and real to us in the bread and wine - the ordinary is made holy by God. This is the "spiritual food" of the baptized life that sustains us, draws us close to God, and sends us out to serve God in the world. Regularly receiving the sacraments helps us to develop an awareness of God's presence in our lives. Beyond the sacraments of the church, we recognize that the holy is found all over in the ordinary moments of our lives. Life itself is sacramental.

A Creedal faith. Rooted in tradition.

Christianity is a 2000-year-old faith. Billions of people have thought and written about, prayed to and strived to follow Jesus Christ. Being rooted in tradition means being in conversation with these voices and drawing on their wisdom. The ancient Christian Creeds and the Episcopal Church's Catechism are two documents that outline our faith.

The Nicene and Apostles Creeds, dating back to the 300's C.E., are some of the oldest summaries of our faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Catechism is a commentary on the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and provides an Outline of the Faith. It is found in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer.