Why church?!

Mystery is truth in a process of being revealed. We are seekers of truth beyond all words, using our ancient religious languages of story, symbol, song, art, gesture, experience, and silence to share our experience as companions on the journey. Church is a community bound together by our joy, our questions, our burdens, and our sorrows; it’s a laboratory for growth and understanding, for practices of service, study, leadership, integrity, and courage.

Some people speak more than one religious language. Our fluency is in the language of the Christian people, of which there are many dialects. Our ancient stories and wisdom speak their Truth into our lives and times, and call on us to put our strengths and gifts into service for the meek and the vulnerable. Through the stories, rituals, and practices handed down through generations, we are humbled by our existential limitations, and by the infinite mystery of God.

Why church? Because we’re a community of appreciation, accompaniment, and support for each other, in solidarity with all God’s creatures as our kin. We’re in this together: as a people committed to God’s holy mission of love, life, and liberation.

Because justice

Active in Astoria for over 150 years, Grace Episcopal Church recognizes God’s call to work for the healing of injustices past and present, and to acknowledge the ways in which we have benefited from injustice, despite our best intentions. Together with our neighbors, powerful and marginalized, we are changed as we learn and work and we pray for the day when all people are fed, housed, clothed, and free. When we love one another as God loves us we find God’s realm.

Because Healing

We help each other in hard times, as a community of souls being healed and sins forgiven, in God’s free gift of love. Mourning, lamentation, mystery and doubt are part of our experience, right alongside joy and grace.

Because serenity

We live with more love and less fear, knowing that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Because belonging

You don’t believe in God? You are welcome here. People belong because they believe, or believe because they belong, sometimes both or neither.
You and all your questions belong.