OUR FOCUS AND BELIEFS

AT ST. PAUL, we believe all people are beloved, and valued, children of God. We believe grace is God's gift to us, with no strings attached. We believe that God's love is for everyone, with no exceptions.

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St. Paul is a member church of the ELCA.
ELCA stands for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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While everyone believes in God in a variety of ways, there are some Christian beliefs and doctrines that all Lutherans hold in common.

The ELCA confesses the Trinity of God:  God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

• This church confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  We believe the Gospel, is the Good News, of the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.

  • Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh, through whom everything was made and through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, God invents a new creation.

  • God’s message is proclaimed to us as both Law and Gospel, as the Word of God.  We learn Law to know what is expected of us.  We learn Grace to know that God forgives us and loves us. God is revealed through judgment and mercy, through words and acts, beginning with the Word in creation, continuing in the history of Israel, and centering in the fullness of Jesus Christ.

  • The canonical (accepted by the Church) Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the written Word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them, God’s Spirit speaks to us, in order to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.  This is the norm of our proclamation, faith, and life.

• This church accepts the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this church. We typically say the Apostles' Creed on most Sundays and the Nicene Creed on festival Sundays like Christmas and Easter. We use the Athanasian Creed rarely, sometimes on Trinity Sunday.

• This church accepts the unaltered Augsburg Confession as a true witness to the Gospel, and all churches which likewise accept the teachings of the unaltered Augsburg Confession. This document was written as a unifying document by Philipp Melanchton, student of Martin Luther, and is based on the Scriptures, earlier Lutheran statements of faith, the first centuries of Church tradition, as well as Martin Luther's theological views.

• This church accepts the other confessional writings in the Book of Concord, namely, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise, the Small Catechism, the Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord, as further valid interpretations of the faith of the Church. The Book of Concord was written by various Lutheran theologians.  Martin Luther specifically wrote the Small and Large Catechisms and the Smalcald Articles. 

• This church confesses the Gospel, recorded in the Holy Scriptures and confessed in the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran confessional writings.  The Gospel is the power of God to create and sustain the Church for God’s mission in the world.