We listen to Christ’s teaching together. We call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding (Proverbs 2). As members together in the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9), we encourage all persons who feel the Spirit’s urging to share what they have heard from God with the wider community, either during open worship or from the pulpit.

Christ’s teachings and God’s will for our lives are revealed to us through the “three-legged stool” of Quaker discernment: direct listening to God, Scripture, and the faith community all working together to listen.

We seek to become people who embody the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

We are called to faithfully steward those things entrusted to us: wealth (Proverbs 3), sexuality, people, and privilege. We decry as sinful any situation in which we use an imbalance of power to our own benefit, whether personal or systemic. We work to change systems of oppression, recognizing that those of us with the most privilege must do the most work. We ask the Holy Spirit to change our hearts.

We confess that we have, too often, failed in calling out injustice, in loving and knowing our neighbors, and in properly stewarding God’s creation. We pray for genuine conviction to undo the harm we have caused. In the midst of real suffering within our community, we humbly seek not only to love our neighbor but to know our neighbor (Luke 10:29), through our conversations, classroom discussions, and times of prayer. We hope to embody a community in which walls of hostility are broken down (Ephesians 2:14) and where love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18).

Our communal life is not limited to our worship times together. We do not wish to be isolated from our neighbors, but instead we reach out to them as servants and friends. (Hebrews 13:2). We seek to meet others where they are and help them meet their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We wish to be a community that draws all people to the feet of Christ, who alone can meet all their needs.

We support all kinds of families, believing that the mutual submission of equals in the covenantal relationship of marriage teaches us about Christ’s servant-leadership (1 Peter 3:7). We believe every Christian must discern whether they are called to committed monogamous relationships (Hebrews 13:4) or to lives of celibacy (1 Corinthians 7:7-8). We commit to supporting each other in our endeavors to faithfully follow our different calls.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.