Introduction
The Session and Diaconate of Trinity Presbyterian Church invite our fellow members and friends of the congregation to prayerfully consider and enter with us into the following Covenant for Values-based Faith. As Elders and Deacons of Trinity we have prayerfully studied, discussed, and accepted the covenant as an intentional statement of how we understand and feel we are to live and serve together as followers of Jesus in our personal lives, community, nation, and world.
This covenant is not the final word on how we are called to live but rather an intentional continuation of a journey that we are already on. We hope and pray that it offers us guideposts and road signs to be a community of faith where our lives and the lives of those we encounter are truly transformed by God’s love.
The Covenant
We the people of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Clearwater, covenant with God and each other to be a community of welcome and acceptance for all who seek spiritual, intellectual, and physical wholeness and well-being. We strive to nurture our hearts, souls and minds while serving neighbors in our time and place.
We follow a vision of ministry grounded in the teaching and life of Jesus where all people know God’s loving Presence. Our mission within this vision is Jesus’ concise summation of the gospel, to inspire lives by loving God with all our Soul, Mind, and Heart, and our neighbor as ourselves.
We understand our traditional Christian beliefs as thresholds into the multiplicity of God’s presence in all creation. Open to the transforming power of God’s Spirit, we seek to accept all people and allow room for diverse interpretations of faith. We welcome different approaches to serve God and show respect for one another’s values and beliefs. We seek common ground in the life and ministry of Jesus and trust that God’s truth is always bigger than any one particular community of faith’s interpretation of that truth. We do our best to remain open to the transforming presence of God’s love throughout creation, in our scriptures, and within our own lives.
We covenant to be guided, led, and thus to live as best we can by values expressed in our scriptures and shared by humanity across divisions of national origin, color, gender, sexuality, age, physical ability, socio-economics, ideology, doctrine and belief. Among, but not limited to these values are:
- Awe – awareness of our participation in a vast creation of deep time, space, and matter that is our source and purpose, knowing that creation is the expression of God, and that we are called to be good stewards of creation.
- Wonder – inspired consciousness, imagination and creativity to explore the beauty, mystery, and meaning of life.
- Grace – unmerited favor, surrounding us with interdependent, life-giving resources and processes that nurture and sustain us.
- Faithfulness – assurance and reliability that the awe, wonder, and grace supporting our existence are always with us even when apparently absent.
- Hope – anticipation of the future with expectation of meaning and purpose that is grounded in knowledge and experience of history, both shallow and deep.
- Love – attraction that holds the universe together through relationships that give, receive, allow, accept, and forgive through kindness and mutual respect.
- Justice – natural equity within and throughout the universe, void of scarcity and filled with enough for everyone and everything to have meaning and fulfilled purpose.
- Joy – deep, abiding gladness that embraces the breadth of life’s experiences and acknowledges the ebb and flow of comfort in sorrow and sadness in celebration.
- Service – to share resources, abilities, information, and attention in ways that provide, affirm, and nurture the common good of creation.
- Peace – existence within the full diversity of creation that allows respectful conflict without violence and seeks to sing the rich harmony of the myriad voices of cultures, nations, religions, and nature.
- Human Dignity – Creation and Incarnation, inseparable yet distinct, form the dignity of humanity. We are called to remember our inherent, divine goodness created from the earth and in the image and likeness of the Creator. We are called to remember our true humanity by the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. To know our divine humanity is to truly love and forgive as we are loved and forgiven.
Accepted by the Session of Trinity Presbyterian Church, May 22, 2018
Accepted by the Diaconate of Trinity Presbyterian Church, May 27, 2018
