We Believe: 

...there is One God Who Creates All Things, redeems us from sin and death and renews us as the Children of God. As Episcopalians, we promise to follow Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. We believe that the mission of our church is restoration of All People to Unity with God and Each Other in Christ.

 Overview of the Episcopal Church:

St. Luke's Episcopal Church is a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and the Episcopal Church, USA. There are 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church, a few of which are outside the continental United States. The Episcopal Church is a member province of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide association of Anglican churches. There are 38 provinces in the Anglican Communion. 

Like all Anglican churches, Episcopal churches share certain things in common.

Both Protestant and Catholic:

The Episcopal Church stands squarely in the Reformed, or Protestant, tradition and yet we consider ourselves to be equally directly descended from the early Church as the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.

While we worship in ways similar to the Roman Catholic tradition, we do not recognize a single authority, such as the Pope. The Episcopal Church is often referred to as the "middle way," since it contains elements of both the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches.

The Book of Common Prayer:

Central to the life of churches in the Anglican Communion is the Book of Common Prayer, the collection of worship services that all worshipers in an Anglican church follow. It is called "common prayer" because we all pray it together, around the world.

Our present prayer book in the Episcopal Church was published in 1979. While other worship resources and prayers exist to enrich our worship, the Book of Common Prayer is the authority that shapes our worship.

For convenience, the service of the day is copied from the Book of Common Prayer, printed in the service booklet, and distributed to worshipers as they enter the church.

  Scripture, Tradition, and Reason:

Episcopalians value Scripture, Tradition and Reason equally. We often use the metaphor of a three-legged stool, with each leg of the stool being Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

While Episcopalians, like all Christians, acknowledge the Bible (the Holy Scriptures) as the Word of God and completely sufficient to our reconciliation to God, we believe the Bible should be looked at in the context of our own time and place.

For two thousand years Christianity has amassed experiences of God and of following Jesus, and what these people have said to us through the centuries is critical to our understanding it in our own context. The traditions of the Church connect all generations together and give us a starting point for our own understanding.

Episcopalians believe that every Christian must build an understanding and relationship with God, and to do that, God has given us intelligence and our own experience, which we refer to as "Reason." Based on the text of the Bible itself, and what Christians have taught us about it through the ages, we then must sort out our own understanding of it as it relates to our own lives.

  Leadership and Governance of the Church:

Both lay (non-ordained) and clergy share leadership in the Episcopal Church. The Vestry is the governing body of a church and oversees the property and assets of a church, while the Rector is a priest who is in charge of the worship and music of the church and manages the entire staff.

Every parish is connected to a larger structure. The basic unit of ministry in the Episcopal Church is the "diocese," or a region of a reasonable number of Episcopalians. Each diocese is presided over by a "diocesan bishop" who may have help from a variety of other kinds of bishops, depending on the circumstances. The word "Episcopal" means "bishop" in Greek. The diocesan bishop ordains priests and deacons to serve the "parishes," or congregations, of the diocese.

Each parish has one or more priests, who lead the parish in worship, make decisions related to the sacramental life of the parish and support the ministry of the worshiping Christians there.

A congregation chooses ("calls") a priest to become the rector, subject to the approval of the diocesan bishop. A diocesan bishop is similarly elected by the clergy and laity of the diocese, subject to the approval of the bishops of the Episcopal Church as a whole.

The Episcopal Church is governed by a Constitution and a set of laws (known as "canons"), which it establishes for itself by Convention, but the diocesan bishop is the ecclesiastical (or "church") authority in his or her particular diocese.

The bishops of the Episcopal Church have no jurisdiction outside of their dioceses, so they meet together twice per year to pray and make decisions about the life of the Church.

Every nine years, the Church elects a "Presiding Bishop" who represents the Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion and "presides" over meetings of the bishops, known as the "House of Bishops."

Every three years, in a General Convention delegations from all the dioceses, along with the House of Bishops, gather to worship, to pass legislation for the Church and to make broad decisions about policy and worship.

The general convention is organized into two Houses, the House of Delegates (technically, the Upper House) and the House of Bishops. Each diocese elects 4 clergy and 4 lay persons to represent it in the House of Delegates. All active bishops in the Episcopal Church are members of the House of Bishops. Legislative acts must be approved by both these two houses.

-  Adopted with permission from web site of Trinity Church, New Haven, Ct.