New Light's Approach to Faith

Forming a new community of faith is an amazing adventure. We are gifted with opportunities to define ourselves from the very beginning.

Our approach to faith:

• Faith is a journey. We don’t have it all figured out, and we don’t expect anyone else to either. We each bring our own questions and doubts about issues of faith. We are continually striving to love God more deeply and love our neighbor more fully.
  
  
• We are seeking to be more like Jesus and trying to help each other do that as a community, through all the messiness of life. We can all be better people than we are: more loving, less selfish, more caring… more like Jesus.
  
  
• Each one of us is a beautiful, unique creation of God – warts and all. There is no cookie cutter mold into which followers of Christ must fit.
  
  
• God loves us infinitely just as we are, but loves us enough that God wants each of us to be more than we currently are.
  
  
• There are many ways to deepen the spiritual life: prayer (in a thousand different forms), reading and study (of the Bible and other books), meditation, dance, listening to or creating music, conversation, hospitality, service, practicing gratitude, tithing, going on retreats, living in community, celebrating Communion… We encourage everyone to explore those practices most compatible with their unique way of being.
  
  
• We believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, written by human authors, and meant to be read as the story of God’s self-revelation to God’s people. The Bible contains many kinds of literature, some meant to be understood literally, others allegorically, and still others symbolically. The Bible contains history, but it’s not a history book. Just as Jesus taught in parables, some Biblical literature contains stories meant to teach deep lessons about God and the world. The true power of Scripture is in its ability to convey truth and meaning to human hearts, and we believe every time we come to the text it says something new to us.
  
  
• We want to integrate faith, life, and politics: our faith informs the way we see the world and calls us to action on behalf of the poor, the neglected, and those held hostage to life’s situations.
  
  
• The earth, with its abundance of resources, is a gift from God. We are responsible for honoring the gift by practicing careful stewardship through recycling, purchasing environmentally friendly products, and considering our carbon footprint in all that we do. This is a spiritual practice.
  
  
• As people of faith, we cannot be satisfied with a world filled with violence, poverty, hunger, and racism. Peace and justice are not just ideals, but passions to be pursued.