Our Name
Grace by the Sea Anglican Church
Our little building sits just up the hill from the Salish Sea in beautiful Oak Harbor, WA. The beauty of the sea combined with God's goodness in providing a building for worship inspired some of our original members to choose the name Grace by the Sea. Every Sunday we are reminded of God's grace, through the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus.
Our Vision
Grace by the Sea Anglican Church
Life with Christ
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Life: The greatest enemy in Christian thought is surprisingly not the Devil. The great enemy in our life, according to the Bible, is death. Death is the thing that lurks around every corner, at the end of every road, and we will all meet it one day. However, when Christ defeated the grave through His victory in the Resurrection, Christians no longer fear the Great Enemy. Death has been swallowed up by Life. And because of that we can experience the fullness of life with Christ.
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With: When we think about God, our minds should go to the great mystery of the Trinity. We believe that God is “Three-in-One”. Within this divine mystery, we see perfect communion. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit have perfect unity with each other. There is a “with-ness” in the midst of God. The aim of the Christian life is to participate in this “with-ness.” We do so through the Eucharist, the fellowship of the saints, and the worship of the Church. With these things, we develop a life with Christ.
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Christ: In Ancient Christian thought, there’s a phrase that’s both powerful and terrifying — the Beatific Vision. In short, it means seeing our Lord “face to face.” This is terrifying because there are many stories in the Bible where seeing God face to face leads to death. He is too glorious to even lay our eyes on. Yet the terrifying power of God is made accessible because God himself took on flesh and revealed his face to us through Jesus Christ. Now we have the ability to behold that Beatific Vision. Our striving in this life is all aimed at one day seeing our Lord face to face, where we will forever experience life with Christ.
Our Mission
Grace by the Sea Anglican Church
Reverent
We are reverent in our worship of God.
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We have come to believe that Christ is our authority. While Christ is, of course, known as our friend, we cannot lose sight of the reality that he is also our God. He has authority over our lives, and we gladly give him allegiance because we know him to be patient and loving towards us. When we begin to approach him rightly, we become a people who relate well to the Lord, others, ourselves, and creation. We stop the selfish living that causes destruction, war, and toxic relationships. And we start to live into a way of interacting with others that is restorative, peaceful, and healthy.
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Relational
We are relational in how we interact with God and the Church.
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In CS Lewis’, The Great Divorce, he writes a theological fantasy about the nature of hell. As his characters goes further and further into hell, they’re encountered by people so consumed with themselves that they’re unable to be in community with anybody else. They have their grand mansions and material possessions, but it comes at the cost of friendship. At Grace by the Sea, we recognize that isolation, in the way the CS Lewis writes, is indicative of something wrong with the world. This isolation has been undone by way of the Cross and being brought into the family of God through baptism. Within the Church, we live in community because of what Christ has done. We are the family of God. It is through our relationship with each other that we can more fully see God himself.
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Redemptive
We are redemptive in our witness to Christ.
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As one theologian said, “We do the world the way the world was meant to be done.” As we participate with Christ and cooperate with the Holy Spirit, we take part in the God’s renewing activity in the world. We don’t live for the sake of ourselves, but rather we model our living after Jesus — who lived and died for the sake of the world. As we live more fully into Jesus, this causes us to be a people who bring about redemption in this world with the help of the Holy Spirit.
