Wits End Church

Constitution: Proposed Revision

The proposed changes pertain to the following 3 sections of the document: Purpose, Values, and
Statement of Faith. Revision of the remainder of the document may take place in 2017.

Purpose:
We join Jesus in discovering, nourishing, and engaging the Kingdom of God.

Values:
We join Jesus
Jesus is a person whom we receive and in whose way we walk. We practice
church as family and experience what it means to fully belong, generously invest,
and freely participate.
Discovering
As Gods children, created for intimate communion, we explore
our Fathers good work in creation and redemption.
Nourishing
Christ gathers us at his table, offers us the gift of abundant life,
and frees us to live it. We cultivate rhythms of work and Sabbath
by embodying sacred practices of the church and by supporting
one another unto lives of wholeness.
Engaging
The Spirit empowers us individually and collectively to be fully
human. We risk together to receive Gods imagination and to
participate in the restoration of all things.
The Kingdom of God
Jesus is redeeming all things. The arc of the sacred story we live is towards new
creation. In this hope, we persevere in our life together as the church and affirm:
in essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love.

Statement of Faith
We affirm the Nicene Creed as an essential statement of Christian faith.
Nicene Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Alongside the creed, we confess the following:

We receive the Scriptures as the living Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and
written down by Gods servants.
Humanity bears the dignity of both the Divine image and the scars of our disobedience
in Eden. We joyfully affirm the beauty of humanity and humbly acknowledge our
brokenness.
The gospel reveals the immeasurable kindness of God, freely offered in Jesus Christ, and
continually shared through the movement of the Spirit.
We practice baptism and celebrate the Eucharist. In baptism, we identify with Christ by
sharing in his death, burial, and resurrection. In the Eucharist, we are nourished by the
body and blood of Christ. As the body of Christ, we offer ourselves, individually and
communally, as the life of the world.
We eagerly await the return of Jesus.