The community is a discipline of mutual encouragement and mutual testing, keeping me both hopeful and honest about the love that seeks me, the love I seek to be.

– Parker J. Palmer

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, no matter how virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we are saved by love.

– Reinhold Niebuhr

Spiritual discernment makes operational our faith that an ever present Guide . . . is present to lead us in the way of truth and love as individuals and congregations. It opens our sails as a church to the spirit whose winds we believe are always blowing and will always move us closer to Christ, closer to one another, and close to the world that God wills.

– Stephen Bryant

. . . Authentic community is formed when believers come together and totally commit to one another – regardless of the life situation or issues that may arise. When an environment like this is created, the freedom exists to encourage one another at the deepest of levels. It’s through that type of connection that real community blossoms.

– Larry Crab

Love is the identifying mark of Christianity. In a world of hate, envy and anger, love sticks out like a healthy thumb. When anyone walks away from an encounter with us, that person should remember our love, not our convictions.

 – Rodney Pickett

In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Betsy Schwarzentraub