Our Values at All Souls

O Lord, our heavenly Father, keep your household the Church continually in your true religion, that we who trust in the hope of your heavenly grace may always be defended by your mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.
– Collect for the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany (BCP, 2019)

Our Tradition: Centered Faith and Common Prayer

  • We delight in Anglicanism as a middle road (via media) between different expressions of the catholic Christian faith. We work to live in this center, and to deepen it as a rich and unique contribution to the Great Tradition of Christianity, which is rooted in the ecumenical creeds (especially the Apostles Creed’, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed).

  • We cherish the Old and New Testaments as the holy written Word of God. We read them carefully and prayerfully, in the light of reason and with the help of the Holy Spirit, and interpret them in humble communion with the Christian tradition.

  • We practice a spirituality of personal devotion and corporate worship. We celebrate the historic beauty of The Book of Common Prayer and are guided by it into deep rhythms of prayer, into faithful understanding of Scripture and Tradition, and into a rich and living relationship with the Risen Savior.

Our Worship: Reverence and the Sacred

  • We worship in Scripture-saturated liturgy, and seek to joyfully encounter the Risen Christ in our sacramental worship, with the Eucharist as the core of our life together.

  • We celebrate and protect the sacred nature of our high and formal expression of worship, not from fear or rigidity, but from love and a belief in its profound goodness for the soul in our “desecrated” age.

  • We aspire to be a haven of holy rest for the people of our city, and a holy altar for God in the beautiful city of Portland. In this, we express the sacred with joy and do the work of our liturgy with a spirit of gladness.

Our Community: Wholeness and True Belonging

  • We believe healthy people are the foundation of a healthy parish, and work to attend to the wellbeing of whole persons, who are sound in mind, body, emotions, spirit, and the many holy practicalities of their lives.

  • We abide in Christ, seeking rootedness and true belonging to counter the painful despair of a “disposable” culture.

  • We practice the established rhythms of the Church Year as a guide to common celebration, repentance, feasting and fasting together. We work to spend time together in worship, work, play, prayer, and outreach. We find ways to know and to be known, and desire to be deeply present to one another.

Our Children: Living into Christ’s Baptism

  • We invite our children to live into their baptism and to grow as full members of the Body of Christ.

  • We see children not as the future of the Church, but as the Church. We honor their presence and contributions to our community and learn from them as we follow Christ together.

  • We structure our children’s liturgy as a worship space characterized by peace, simplicity, conversation, and wonder.

Our Mission: Serving God and Loving Neighbor

  • We recognize that we are sent out at the end of the Liturgy to “love and serve the Lord” in our daily life and various communities and callings. We seek to meet our neighbor—locally and globally—as we would meet Christ.

  • We work with commitment and cheerfulness in whatever stations we find ourselves, seeking to embody the transformative message of the Gospel.

  • We pray fervently for the life and flourishing of the whole world in Christ, and dedicate our resources, time, creativity, relationships, and all other gifts to that holy and joyful end.