Here is a summary of our beliefs:

Sin
     Ever since Adam and Eve fell for the devil’s temptation, the world has been corrupted by sin. Hurricanes blow and tornadoes twist. People hate and death prevails. It is a corruption that penetrates to the soul. It is passed down from one generation to the next just like blue eyes and curly hair.

Grace
     This desperate situation called for desperate measures. God would intervene in pure love and mercy. His Son became man in order to live the perfect life in our place. His righteousness replaces our unrighteousness. He then died the perfect death to pay the price for our sins. At this cross we see the ugliest and yet the most beautiful thing ever. We see the full wrath of the Father. He is a just God that demands payment for wrong. Yet, we also see unlimited love. The punishment was carried out on his Son and not us.

The Means of Grace
     This happened many years ago and for most of us, many miles away. So this grace must be delivered to us here and now. As St. Paul said, “how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” The grace of God earned through the life and death of Christ is given to us through the means of grace: the Holy Word of God, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. Through these means Christ comes to us in a very real way. Just as he became man to earn our salvation, so he comes to us in a real way to hand us salvation.

The Divine Service
      The Divine Service on Sunday is nothing more than the means of grace. We gather to receive God’s mercy. We come as the prodigal children to our Father’s house. It is a family reunion of sorts. We gather under our family name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our baptisms give us the full legal right of sons and daughters. We are now able to come before our Father to ask for something very big, mercy. He gives it to us. We are granted an acquittal (Absolution), we hear and sing the story of Christ’s life (Word) and we dine with him and his church (Communion).

Vocation
     We understand that Sunday mornings are more about God giving to us than they are about us worshipping him. Our true worship lasts all week. We are living sacrifices created as God’s workmanship to love our neighbors. We do this in our vocations in life. We all have divinely ordained callings in life. We have family vocations (mother, son, uncle, sister). We have career vocations (nurse, farmer, accountant, student). We have churchly vocations (pastor, layman, Sunday School teacher).   We have civil vocations (citizen, mayor, volunteer). We understand that in these vocations we are the masks of God. God is using us to take care of the world. He continues his very real and physical mode of operation. So our lives and jobs really aren’t about our pleasure, nor are they about pleasing God. After all, God doesn’t need our good deeds in heaven, but our neighbors here on earth do. Our lives are lived for our neighbor as God uses us to love them.

The Word of God and our Confession
      All of this has been taught to us through the Word of God. We believe that the Bible is the true inspired Word of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It cannot err nor lie and is sufficient for our life here and our eternal salvation. Since sin has corrupted us, we tend to add and subtract from God’s holy word, something he forbids for good reason. Because of this, our Lutheran forefathers boldly confessed the truth of God’s Word as a response to corruptions in the past. We here at St. John’s confess the same: the three Ecumenical Creeds: (the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian), the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, the Small and Large Catechisms of Dr. Martin Luther, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope and the Epitome and the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord. These are found in the Book of Concord.

We Believe, Teach, and Confess