Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
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What We Believe

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Oak Harbor Lutheran Church encourages caring relationships with individuals in spiritual or physical need, supports fellowship and outreach, and unites all people in God’s love. We serve our local and global communities through worship, mission, and stewardship of God’s gifts. This congregation provides a loving spiritual home to those who seek God’s grace.

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church is a congregation of the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCA is made up of 11,000 congregations and over five million people across the United States.

Lutheran Christians live in the joy that our broken relationship with God has been healed. We have been made right with God as pure gift through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to believe this good news. In response we seek ways of being thankful to God by loving our neighbors and stewarding God’s creation. (see Romans 3:21-26 and Ephesians 2:8-10

Keep reading if you want to know more.

At Oak Harbor Lutheran we are:

Trinitarian Christians, believing in God as three in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Centered in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior who is the Living Word of God.

Evangelical, meaning focused on the gospel or good news. (In recent years “evangelical” has taken on a popular meaning related to having a certain kind of religious experience in order to be “born again”. Lutheran’s understand “evangelical” as in the Greek New Testament, where it is the word for having to do with the “evangel” or gospel of Jesus Christ. Understood this way, “evangelical” stays focused on good news, not on a required experience. Lutherans believe they are “born again” as a gift when they are baptized.)

Guided by the Bible as the authority for our faith and life. (We hold the Bible to be true not in a literalistic way, but because in it we encounter the Living Word who brings us life.)

A confessional church, meaning we have writings from the time of the 16th century Reformation which provide a shared understanding of our faith. The principle writing is the Augsburg Confession. Confessional marks of our church include

  • justification by grace through faith as the way sinners are made right with God
  • distinguishing between law and gospel in the interpretation of scripture
  • the priesthood of all believers (all Christians are ministers, not just the clergy)
  • faith active in love (living out our faith in lives of witness and service)

Worshipers gathered around Word and Sacraments, meaning when we worship we believe God comes to give us his gifts of grace in three main ways: through the Word and through two Sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. The Sacraments involve water, bread and wine to remind us that God comes to us in everyday ways all the time.

Ecumenical or catholic with a small “c”, meaning we see ourselves as part of the Christian Church that stretches around the globe, and we want to celebrate the unity we have with other Christians.

Concerned about our neighbors and the world, meaning Lutherans are very involved in hospitals, social service agencies, and relief projects around the world. We also view the world as belonging to God, with our role as stewards charged with caring for it.

Musical, with our heritage including the composers, Bach and Handel. So music plays a major role in our faith life, as we carry forward our heritage while also seeking new forms of musical expression.

At Oak Harbor Lutheran We Are Not:

Finished, meaning we live as forgiven sinners, not as perfect people. Even as people made right with God, we continue to live with human weakness and mixed-up priorities. Luther said we are saints and yet sinners. Best of all, we don’t have to be perfect for God to love us. As God loves us, we become new creations of his making.

Individualistic, but rather believe in the need for community. We intentionally try to offer an alternative to a “me” focus by living out a faith that has community worship, learning, fellowship and service at its heart.

Fundamentalistic, meaning we do not reduce the faith to a set of fundamentals that a person must believe in order to be included. We believe there is a wide range of ways to understand key Christian teachings, and that we need each other’s perspective, not just one right answer.

Charismatic, meaning that there is a requirement that a person demonstrate a specific gift of the Holy Spirit, such as speaking in tongues. We certainly celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit and the range of “charisms” or gifts that the Spirit gives. But to require a particular gift would be contrary to the teaching of salvation by grace through faith. Faith, hope and love are at the center of the Holy Spirit’s work.

 

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.