What We Believe
Vision
The people of St. Paul gather to worship, reach out and serve the Lord.
We Believe
- We confesses the Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In our preaching and teaching we trust the Gospel as the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.
- Our teaching or theology serves the proclamation and ministry of this faith. It does not have an answer for all questions, not even all religious questions. Teaching or theology prepares members to be witnesses in speech and in action of God’s rich mercy in Jesus Christ.
- We believe in, and practice, the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
- We believe that through the waters of Baptism, God reaches out to us with a promise of new life by calling us into a relationship with Jesus Christ. This relationship is a life-long journey of faith. We affirm the Baptism of infants. We also welcome and rejoice when adults are baptized as they seek to mark their new life in Christ.
- Our Confession of Faith identifies the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (commonly called the Bible); the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds; and the Lutheran confessional writings in the Book of Concord as the basis for our teaching.
- Every Sunday in worship we hear God’s word from the Scriptures, pray as Jesus taught and come to the Lord’s Table expecting to receive the mercies that the Triune God promises. Throughout the week members continue to live by faith, serving others freely and generously in all that they do because they trust God’s promise in the Gospel. In small groups and at sick beds, in private devotions and in daily work, this faith saturates all of life.
- This connection to all of life is the clearest demonstration of the authority that the canonical Scriptures, the ecumenical Creeds and the Lutheran Confessions have.
- The Holy Spirit uses these witnesses to create, strengthen and sustain faith in Jesus Christ and the life we have in him.
- That life-giving work continues every day, as Martin Luther explained in the Small Catechism: the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”