A Group of People in Love with Jesus: Jesus defines us. He is our groom and we are His bride, His city, His sanctuary, His body. Jesus is our vision and worship is our strategy. Surrendered to Jesus in worship he tells us who we are, fills us with himself and impregnates us with his life. The Church, any church is His creation. We love because we have first been loved by Jesus. The Church is a pearl wrapped around a wound; people wrapped around Jesus Christ and Him crucified; People transfixed by the Love of God;

People Enamored with God’s Grace: Jesus is God’s Grace incarnate in human flesh. At the intersection of time and eternity Jesus bore our sin, sorrow and shame upon a Roman Cross. There he descended into our Hell to exhibit the depths of his love for all, redeem us with His Blood, and romance us to Himself. God is always better than you thought. The Love of Jesus is always deeper than you know. And the Spirit is everywhere working the wonders of Mercy.

A Safe Place to be a Mess: To be a “mess” is unsafe. We’re all unsafe, all a mess – but we hide the mess, which is most unsafe. At “The Sanctuary” we surrender the “mess.” And God reveals that Christ has descended into our mess. He reveals himself in our mess. He is glorified in our mess - for a savior is most glorified where folks need saving. And He cleans up our mess. He is a safe place to be unsafe: a safe place to die and be born again.

A Real Church in this unReal World: Jesus is the Truth. We cannot arrive at the Truth with out being Truthful. We don’t want to “play church,” but be the real church. We’re like the stinky manger in which the Christ child is placed. When we’re honest about the mess, we can be honest about God’s Grace. We are the place in which the Christ is born.

A Place to Wrestle the Word: We mean by that, a biblical church. We believe the Scriptures are “authoritative on all matters to which they speak.” Jesus is The Word, who inhabits the written word, and uses that word to wrestle the lies from our hearts and his truth, Himself, into our hearts. Jacob wrestled the God-man and the God-man named him Israel. It means “Wrestles with God.” We wrestle with Jesus. He can be a bit scary, but He is always Good and He gives us a new name.

A Church without Walls: The Good News is not bound by human walls. We do not want to be defined by terms like “conservative” or “liberal,” “Republican” or “Democrat.” We want to avoid denominational walls, walls created by movements and fads, racial walls, socio-economic walls, relational walls and even physical walls. We do not intend to own a building. And we are sure that the Gospel is not bound. “Jerusalem will be a city without walls… And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within.” (Zech.2:4-5)

A Church within THE CHURCH, containing many churches: The Sanctuary is a small part of the Church Universal and within “The Sanctuary” are many more churches – a “church” is two or three gathered in His name. On the last Sunday of the month, The Sanctuary does not meet as one large group, but as many “House Churches” throughout the city. By organizing in this way, we hope to nurture authentic community, avoid some of the pitfalls of large institutions, and remind you – no institution is your Lord. Jesus is Lord.

Just Enough Structure to Let Good Things Run Wild: We hope to provide a minimal amount of structure - through our ministry teams and house churches - in order to provide a maximal amount of room for the life of Christ to run wild. That may be frustrating at times, (because we won’t pretend that we know what we’re doing). When it is, we hope that you would ask the Lord, “What do you want to do through me?” We are painfully joyfully aware that anything truly good only happens through the Spirit of Jesus implanted like a seed in the womb of our faith. When we worship our Groom, we give birth to his Life: messy, painful, confusing – but profoundly good – His Life: in, from and through His Bride, His Sanctuary… us.

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