Just as the idea of what a church should look like has changed throughout our history, so has the idea of what a church--a community of faith--should do. We have struggled to remain true to our calling as God's people in the face of the pressures of a particular time and place. But, just as there are commonalities in the buildings; there is a common witness that winds its way through all of our history, as Paul says, "There is...one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God...."Throughout our history, two questions have continued to demand our attention, "What is the Church?" and "What is its purpose?" The fact that we are here at all is due in part to the faithfulness of our spiritual forbears in struggling with these questions and in living out the answers that resulted.

Times of change and transition, like those in which we live, offer an opportunity for us to ask ourselves these same questions. Or, to put it another way, we could simply listen to the words of the prophet Micah and ask ourselves: "What does it mean to ‘do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God,' on the street where we live or where our church is located?" The answers to these questions will define our ministry in the days, months, and years to come.