Mission & Values
About This Congregation
Pilgrim is a home for hungry minds and souls. In these days, many of us are discovering our longings for a spiritual life and a faith community. If you are not already a part of a faith community, we invite you to bring your spiritual journeys to this Lutheran Christian place. We invite you to find in Pilgrim Lutheran a home for your hungry minds and souls.
Pilgrim's Mission Statement and 7 Core Values
MISSION:
Pilgrim Lutheran Church is an inclusive Christian worshipping community that seeks, nurtures, and empowers hungry minds and souls to live generously in response to God’s love.
CORE VALUES:
Pilgrim Lutheran is an ELCA Congregation.
Pilgrim Lutheran is a "Caring for Creation" Congregation,
and has committed to divest its endowment from fossil fuel companies.
Pilgrim is a "Reconciling in Christ Congregation"
We are pilgrims who have been called by Christ to reconciliation and wholeness. Pilgrim, therefore, welcomes all hungry minds and souls into the full participation of our life together and delights in our opportunities to know God. When Christ claims a person in Baptism, the promises are not conditional. Although people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender have been excluded from some congregations, Pilgrim welcomes you. Pilgrim also welcomes people who have been excluded because of race, economic status, mental or physical disabilities. We pledge to our community and to the universal church that we will strive to welcome all in the name of Christ to join us in our life together and in our outreach to the world. Pilgrim is a diverse group of believers redeemed and united into the Body of Christ. This diversity enriches, nourishes and challenges our ministry. Pilgrim offers to all who wish to be a part of our community this assurance: “you are no longer strangers or aliens, but fellow citizens and members of God’s household.” (Eph.2:19)
Adopted on May 18, 2003.
Reports and Documents
Council Resolutions
1. worshipping and singing together
We are a community of worship, centered in the grace of God and in our liturgical, scriptural, sacramental, and musical inheritances, joyfully received and re-visioned for our context.
2. growing in faith
We nurture faith through home, church, and daily life. We dare to ask tough questions and challenge assumptions, because the reformation of the church that Martin Luther sparked began with a heated debate on a university campus.
3. living sustainably and doing justice
We seek to be a community of solidarity and service, living out the countercultural values of the gospel, grounded in moral courage and love for one another, our wider communities, and the whole creation.
4. robust care and celebration
If one rejoices, we all rejoice together; if one suffers, we all suffer together (1 Corinthians 12:26). The gospel calls us beyond rugged American individualism to meeting Christ incarnationally in the one body of Christ.
5. outreach and welcome
The gospel calls us to inclusive and intentional avenues of invitation. We meet the suffering and risen Christ in the stranger.
6. shared ministry
Each of us is a minister, living out our baptismal vocation of loving the neighbor in a variety of ways both within and beyond the ministry of Pilgrim.
7. creativity
In service to the unique community context in which we have been planted, we focus on imagination, inspiration, inventiveness, and the arts.