Judy and Watson
I believe in God the Father whose love breaks our bounds to sin and pours out grace beyond measure so that we might be God’s instruments of love and reconciliation. This God is revealed in the Word written in Scripture, the Word proclaimed and prophesied by human instruments, and the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ. The Word of God calls us to shape our priorities around worship and within communities of faith. The Bible addresses our deepest need for salvation and redemption, and helps us to move beyond ourselves to work for wholeness and freedom for all.
I affirm the one triune God. I am in awe of God’s presence which transforms us and shapes our history. Our history reveals that justice does triumph to lift up the powerless and to cast down the power hungry. I affirm the Creeds and thank God for their power to make me feel one with Christians and God’s people in every time and place. I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord of this Kingdom on earth and the one in heaven. I serve a risen Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, who is fully God and yet born of Mary. I celebrate the real power of the Holy Spirit to quicken faith, to deepen baptismal vows, to evangelize us all, and to seek unity for God’s sake.
Jesus gave his community of followers’ two sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I affirm the sacrament of Baptism as a sign and seal of God’s Grace and the beginning of a new life rooted in Christ that professes our need for confession and repentance, for love and affirmation as one grows in the faith. As we grow in God’s ways and in God’s Word, God puts within us the desire to serve and to nurture others in this faith. The Lord’s Supper is the sign and seal of our communion with the crucified and risen Lord, who nourishes us with spiritual food and empowers us with the Holy Spirit to do His will and to pour out His love.
I appreciate our Presbyterian form of government, born of the fathers and mothers of the fledgling faith, and reborn under the influence of John Calvin and the early Reformers and consistently in the process of reformation. Through our representational form of church governance, all voices may receive a hearing and all may take part. Our system of elders is theologically congruent with our perspective on the church as “the priesthood of all believers.”
I respect our Reformed tradition and fashion my ministry by the Book of Order and the Book of Confessions. With these documents and an open mind and heart, we have a church that is universal, eternal and blessed. We are anchored in God’s covenants and sailing the river of life with Christ, our Pilot and Navigator, over every type of sea and through all kinds of weather. “To God Be The Glory.”
Rev. Judy Alaide Stanley