God is Here
We believe that God is a living Presence and a loving Presence. God is here, waiting to be encountered, waiting for us to show up.
Beliefs
Everything we believe is rooted in Jesus’ call to love God, our neighbor and ourselves.
Let’s be honest. Sometimes “beliefs” have been used to decide who’s good and who’s bad, who’s in and who’s out, who’s loved and who isn’t. And we’ve all heard about (or maybe been in) churches where there was a lot of emphasis on having the so-called “right” beliefs and very little on embodying God’s love in the world.
Here at Winnetka Congregational Church, our belief about belief is that what you do is a lot more important than what you say. And that doubt is as much a part of faith as belief. Our beliefs are therefore as much what we aspire to believe as they are what we actually believe every second of every day. We often find ourselves praying the prayer found in Mark 9:24: “I believe; help my unbelief.”
That said, here are some of the beliefs we are trying to live into around here:
The Living Word
We believe the Bible is a living text, a living, breathing word from God that is truthful and to be taken seriously, but not always literally.
Follow Jesus
Our faith is rooted in Jesus Christ and we endeavor to follow his life and teaching in every aspect of our lives.
Value Other Paths
We can wholeheartedly walk in the way of Jesus, while still fully respecting and valuing other paths to God. And we can stand firmly in Jesus while still standing by, with and for our sisters, brothers, and friends of other faiths.
Love God
A great summary of Jesus’ teaching can be found in the words of Matthew 22: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. To love God includes loving God’s creation - and caring for all life on earth as well as the earth itself.
Love Others
To love others means we not only love those closest to us and most like us, we love those we may not know or understand. And there’s room at God’s table for all of us. We take seriously the words of Paul who taught us in 1 Corinthians 12 how interconnected we all are and how “If one part is hurt, all parts share in the pain. If one part is honored, all the parts share in the joy.”
Love Yourself
To love ourselves means we trust that God loves us as we are, and loves us into who we can be. To love ourselves means we take time for worship; prayer; Bible study; spiritual, intellectual and personal growth; for rest and friendship and community. It means we try to feed our souls as well as our bodies with good things.