Early monks and nuns described their monasteries as “schools of love.”

At St. Peter’s, we like to think of ourselves as a “school of love” too—a place where we practice giving and receiving love from one another. Like a monastery, the goal of Christian community is to help form us as followers of Jesus; a place where we grow more and more into the people God is calling us to become.

At St. Peter’s, faith is about more than checking off a list of beliefs—much more. It’s about our relationship with God and one another. As Episcopalians, we experience God in many ways, including in community with others, in the beauty and mystery of creation, and in our rich Episcopal tradition of prayer and ritual, a tradition that is rooted in the past, yet open and responsive to the present.

At the heart of our prayer life is the Eucharist, which we celebrate together Sunday after Sunday. Here, in a simple meal of bread and wine, we experience the presence of Jesus. Our experience of the meal also opens our eyes and hearts to see Jesus in the face of strangers and friends in our daily lives. 

Each Sunday in our liturgy, we pray the Nicene Creed together, an ancient statement of faith. While the first word of the creed, credo, is usually translated as “I believe…”, the spirit of credo is more like “I give my heart…” It is not just meant as a list of statements with which we are supposed to agree in order to belong. It’s a statement of the heart. Above all at St. Peter’s, we seek to give our hearts to God.