Journey of Faith

For those new to St. Andrew

We are glad you are interested in the St. Andrew Church community! We are about reaching people with God’s radical acceptance and grace in Jesus Christ to make lives whole. We invite you to deepen your relationship with God by joining our Journey of Faith (JF) process where you can continue to experience God’s love and grow in your faith.

We offer JF as a gift to all those new to our community. Although you will become a member of St. Andrew as a part of this process, the focus of this process is not on membership, but on helping you grow in discipleship. We recognize a life of faith is not about being a member, but about being a follower of Christ in a community of fellow believers.

To learn more about JF we encourage you to attend our Come and See sessions. If you would like more information about joining St. Andrew, please contact the church office.

The chart below will help you understand our approach at St. Andrew as we focus on the emerging way of discipleship instead of the traditional way of church membership.

Traditional Way of Membership	Emerging Way of Discipleship
New member classes	Catechumenal process (Journey of Faith)
New people conform to the way we do things	New people transform congregation and even challenge how we do things
We give you the answers	You raise the questions
Voting member only needs to commune once and make a contribution of record each year	Christianity is a way of life
Church provides you with all you need to be religious (in an hour a week!)	Living as a Christian is a 24 x 7 proposition, that mostly happens away from church
A product	A process
Focus on destination – becoming a member	Focus on the journey, where the trip is as important as the destination
Disseminating information	Building relationships with God, self and others
Assenting to doctrine	Practicing faith through prayer, Bible reading, worship and ministry in daily life
Limited time span	As long as it takes
For new members only	Whole congregation involved through serving as faith partners and blessings in worship