About Us

What our Congregation Is

Messianic

We have an intimate relationship with the God of Israel and with his promised messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth, who has instituted a new covenant that allows people to pass through God's judgment and experience the Kingdom of Heaven now, in This World, and in doing so have assurance of a place in the World to Come.

Jewish

We are a community living out the Sinai covenant, following its scriptural customs and rituals as appropriate for Jews in Diaspora. We also follow some non-scriptural Rabbinical customs to maintain a modern Jewish lifestyle. We value our Jewish identity because it is our history, heritage, and community, not because it is necessary for a relationship with the messiah. We participate in and support the local and global Jewish community.

By lineage we are a mix of Jew and Gentile. By ancestry or by choice we are followers of the Sinai covenant, completely or partially. By devotion to God through Messiah we are members of God's family and called children of Avraham.

A community of disciple-servants

Within the messiah's covenant, God actively restores human nature to its intended goodness: we not only receive atonement but we are "made innocent". As it is written in Acts 13 (verses 32, 38-39):

What God promised our fathers he has made complete for us, their children, by raising up Yeshua... through Yeshua the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through him everyone who believes is made innocent from everything the Torah of Moshe could not make innocent.

God desires this restoration to be a step by step process with which we cooperate. Yet participating in the process is difficult because character flaws such selfishness, impatience, entitlement, envy, prejudice, or laziness are often firmly entrenched. To aid our cooperation with this important part of the messiah's covenant we are instructed by God to be disciple-servants: people who ally together to transform issues of self-discipline into shared-discipline, bearing each others' burdens while living lives of goodness and charity.

Advancing the Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is where God's will is done: where his authority and order reign. The messiah's followers have a responsibility to advance the Kingdom of God by extending its effect in our own lives and the lives of others.

Spiritually, the messiah's covenant is the doorway into the Kingdom of God: we demonstrate the spiritual reality and usefulness of the Kingdom of God in our own lives, knowing others will notice and may then welcome its effect upon them and within them. Physically, the Kingdom of God is extended to others in acts of charity: charity and spiritual growth are interrelated at home and at the synagogue.

God values genuine, productive involvement in his Kingdom. Thus we approach political issues with great caution, acknowledging that whereas people rise to societal expectations, legislating laws that will only be disobeyed is not advancing the Kingdom of God.