This summer we are going to explore the Apostle’s Creed together every Tuesday night. Why? What is the Apostle’s Creed? Creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means ‘I believe’. The Apostle’s Creed is the first ecumenical creed to gather the core beliefs of Christian orthodoxy into an easily memorable formula. Our desire to is to explore these core articles that have been at the foundation of historic Christian belief. Do they still matter? How do they help us into theological reflection? How do they motivate us to be a missional community?
Our guide to answering those questions this summer is Australian theologian Ben Myers. Ben states in the preface to his book however, that theological reflection will not add one thing to our faith. The beautiful mystery is that baptism for the Christian opens the door to the fullness of God’s free gift to us, which can never be added to or taken away. We are not learning the Creed to jump through hoops which makes us into super Christians, but, bringing our faith, curiosity, and context to bear on what has sustained the church over the centuries. This communal activity can bring us into a fuller appreciation of this mysterious gift we’ve been given.
So that is our goal this summer: to let the simple formula of the Creed immerse ourselves in the ancient wisdom and story of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ through the Spirit, so that we may be delighted once again by what God has done for us in Christ and empowered to live fully for Jesus’s sake.