What We Believe

Zion Lutheran Church, What we Believe: Answering Our “Why”

One of the most powerful questions anyone can ask is “why?”  Why do you do what you do?  Why do you believe what you do?  Why?

At Zion Lutheran Church our why is simple:  Because God loves the world.  

We believe that God created the perfect universe, a perfect world, and everything we see perfectly.  But most amazingly, he created each and every person as a uniquely loved and uniquely gifted creation. Why?  Because God wanted to share what he had made with a creation that was made in his image.

We believe that sin, death, and destruction entered the world through our actions as God’s creation.  Why?  Because in sin, we love ourselves more than God or our neighbor.  We believe that we are more important than the One who made us or those around us.  We are the focus. So pain, disease, broken relationships, stress, war, death and decay, all of the things that make our lives on earth difficult happen because we focus on ourselves and not on what God intended for us and his whole creation.

We believe that God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to Bethlehem to be born of Mary, to live to give the world a picture of what perfection looks like, and die to remove sin, death, and the power of the devil from our lives and from the world itself.  Why?  Simply because God loves each of his unique children so much that He sacrificed His Son instead of punishing us for how we treat him, his creation, and one another.

We believe that Jesus suffered and died on the Cross of Calvary and on the third day he rose again.  Why?  So that by his death, he could defeat death for all of us.  Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus opened up the way to escape this life of pain, suffering, and death itself.  He opened up the way back to the perfection that God intended when he first created the universe, the world, and us as his children.  

We believe that through faith, through belief that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by the Father to win back all of Creation from the power of sin, anyone is able to enjoy the new and perfect life that Jesus offers.  Why?  Because God’s love in Jesus Christ is bigger and more powerful than the ugliness we experience in our lives, it is stronger than any sin we commit, and it is able to save us from death itself.

We believe that God shares all of his love and grace with us each week through the Bible readings and messages we hear.  Why?  Because God, as the one true living God, has always spoken to his people and come to them exactly where they are in their lives and he does just that through his church.  

We believe that the Bible is the true Word of God.  Why?  Because over 4000 years, God inspired people to write down messages to certain people at certain times, and while this is a large span of time, there is one single message contained in all of it.  That message is that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s promise fulfilled to all people of all time.

We believe that God personally gives us His promise of forgiveness of our sins and eternal life through two mysterious gifts called Sacraments.  These Sacraments, or gifts, are Baptism and Communion, sometimes called the Lord’s Supper.  Why?  God joins his word of promise in Jesus Christ to physical elements that we can see and experience.  In Baptism, God joins his promise of forgiveness, eternal life, and the Holy Spirit to plain water so that we are able to point back to a moment in time where we personally heard and experienced God’s promise that he would be with us always.  In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus joins His real body and blood with bread and wine to carry the forgiveness and eternal life he won on the Cross to each of us individually.

We believe that we as the church have been called to speak and to show God’s love in Jesus Christ to our community.  Why?  Because of the amazing grace we have been shown in Jesus, and because God has empowered us with his Holy Spirit, we can’t help but reach out to our friends, our family, our neighbors, and our communities to serve as we have been served by Christ.  We do this together as a church and individually through our God given roles as moms and dads, brothers and sisters, employers and employees, teachers and students, wherever God has placed us in our lives.  Each of those roles are our mission field as disciples of Jesus Christ to uniquely show his love through our gifts and talents and serve our neighbor as Christ has served us.

We believe that everyone is welcomed into a relationship with God as their Creator, Jesus as their Savior, and the Holy Spirit as their Guide.  Why?  Because God’s loves the world.  He loves you.

We are proud members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

Interested in learning more about what/why Zion believes the way we do?  Contact Pastor Greg.