The Commission on the MCC Statement of Faith is pleased to announce that the draft Statement of Faith is now available.
The Commission will also be holding three webinars to discuss the Statement and receive additional feedback and comments.
Those webinars are scheduled as follow:
- Monday, November 30, 6:00 pm EST (in English)
- Wednesday, December 2, 4:00 pm EST (in English)
- Wednesday, December 9, 5:00 pm EST (in Spanish)
Further login information will be provided shortly. Be sure to subscribe to MCC.org newsletter or visit the MCC Commission on the Statement of Faith Facebook page for more details.
In addition to the Statement, there will be two addendums. The first is an explanatory commentary of the Statement, included here. The second, which is not yet quite ready for release, gives more historical background. It will be ready for release no later than early next year.
Submit your comments, questions, and suggestions now.
We look forward to our continued dialogue!
Your Commission:
Rev. Cathy Alexander
Rev. Elder Héctor Gutierrez
Rev. Karl Hand, PhD
Bryce E. Rich
Rev. Dr. Axel Schwaigert
Rev. Dr. Elder Candace Shultis, Chair
The DRAFT MCC Statement of Faith
Statement of Faith
Preamble
Metropolitan Community Churches is one chapter in the story of the Church, the Body of Christ. We are people on a journey that began with learning to affirm our bodies, our genders, our sexualities. We join together in community, rooted in God’s love for all people. We are part of an ongoing conversation on matters of belief and faith, building on those who have come before us. Our chapter begins when God says to us: “Come, taste and see.”
Our Faith
“Come, taste and see.” Jesus Christ, you invite all people to your open table. You make us your people, a beloved community. You have restored the joy of our salvation, delivering us from loneliness, despair, and degradation. We are each unique and we all belong, a priesthood of all believers. Baptized and filled with your Holy Spirit, you empower us to be your presence in a hurting world. We affirm your charge to all of humanity to care for the land, sea, and air. Therefore, we will actively resist systems and structures which are destroying your creation. We expect to see your reign on earth as it is in heaven, and we will work toward a world where everyone has enough, wars cease, and all creation lives in harmony. With all of creation we worship you—every tribe, every language, every people, every nation. We know you by many names, Triune God, beyond comprehension, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, who invites us to the feast.
Commentary on the DRAFT MCC Statement of Faith
Introduction
In the history of Christianity, statements of faith have often taken on the form of a document created for external use—a list of propositions presented to the world. They often include long explanations, citing scriptural references and the teachings of earlier Christian writers or the founders of a particular tradition. For our revised Statement of Faith, we have chosen to forego a lengthy list of bullet points in favor of a shorter statement that can be used in worship. The new Statement of Faith is written in the form of a prayer. We have done this for two reasons. First, MCC is committed to the use of inclusive language in reference to both humanity and God. Early on in our work, we were troubled by the awkward phrasings that resulted from our efforts to avoid gendered pronouns in our repeated references to God. By moving from speaking about God or specific persons of the Trinity in the third person (e.g., he, she, it), a move to speaking to them in the second person (you) alleviated this problem. The second reason was that once we made the initial shift, we recognized that a prayer, offered communally, transformed the Statement of Faith from a list of propositions about God into an intimate communication with God.
Read the full document with the rest of the commentary here (PDF file). We encourage you to submit your comments, questions, and concerns here.