The Core 4 of CAC
Belong.
We believe that the image of God dwells in every person. Each of us deserve dignity, respect, and loving community. We seek to create circles that embrace authenticity, wrestle with questions, celebrate joys, and soothe suffering. We seek to intentionally embrace, celebrate, and affirm all identities and intersections.
We believe that God created us as works of art, social location shapes us, and Jesus teaches us to love one another. So, we seek to honor and celebrate our differences, gifts, and diversities.
We are rooted in the Christian tradition and embrace interfaith dialogue and collaboration. We hope to be a place of nourishment and love along your faith & spiritual journey. You are welcome & celebrated here.
Grow.
We believe that to live out faithful lives we must seek to enter a growth process. Growth means finding our gifts, edges, and capacities. We seek to embrace challenge, welcome feedback, and seek out wisdom that helps us move towards being symbols of God’s love and liberation. We value growth in our faith lives, in leadership, personal relationships, and as teammates. We recognize that sometimes there is a disparity between intent and impact, and we seek to acknowledge when we hurt others, to apologize, to learn, and to right our course of action. We are always learning and in the process of becoming.
We seek to grow in our faith lives in exploring, wrestling, challenging, and being challenged by Scripture.
And we seek to grow in community by honoring, listening to, and being transformed by one another’s stories and experiences.
Pray.
We believe that prayer is central to the Christian life. We seek to engage spiritual practices and a rhythm of prayer that helps us align with the pace of God’s sacred rhythms. We follow the liturgical calendar that celebrates sacred seasons such as Advent and Lent. We seek to pray ancient and modern prayers. We seek to curate liturgy that comforts, strengthens, challenges, and calls us deeper into God’s justice and mercy. We believe intentionality and mindfulness open up the potential for ordinary practices to become our prayer life. Therefore, movement, silence, questions, spoken and written prayers, washing dishes, stretching the body, story-sharing all can become forms of prayer that connect us to God and to one another.
Act.
We believe that God calls us to be the body of Christ in the world. We believe that God asks us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. We are called to live out our faith claims by engaging in loving our neighbors. We seek to live out models of solidarity that listen and accompany those around us who face inequity and injustice. We seek to be participants in the transformation of our society that ushers the kingdom of God— the vision of a world where justice, equity, and reconciliation is made a reality. We believe in the flourishing of all people, and so we show up how and where we can, as we seek to be a blessing to each other.