Our Beliefs & Story

Our mission is to create Jesus-loving, inclusive communities that ignite the city!

 

We are BOLD — a church rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which tears down walls that divide us and builds up life.

We are INCLUSIVE — a church where everyone, whatever journey you are on or season you are in, has a real place at the table. We mean it.

We are RELEVANT — a church where the Gospel connects to real life; where beliefs aren’t rigid boxes to check, but launchpads into imagination and meaningful action.

What We Believe

  • We believe God reaches out to us in different ways.

    God is the creator of the universe and giver of all that is good. God is the savior—known boldly and intimately in Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection—who shows us how to live and love. God is the spirit who enables us to make a difference in our world and in the lives of others.

  • We believe the Bible is a beautiful, God-inspired, complex, and challenging book.

    We are “Bible becoming” – seeking intimacy with this extraordinary set of Scriptures by diving deep into it, asking all our questions, finding ourselves and one another in its stories, and being courageous enough to follow all the places that might lead us.

  • We believe Black, Disabled, LGBTQIA, and all people undervalued by the world are expressions of God’s creative beauty.

    We are a community committed to growing more deeply and fully into embodying anti-racist values. We are a Reconciling Congregation and celebrate the gifts of diversely queer Christians in every part of our life together.

  • We believe sin is real.

    The experience of sin, both what we have done and what we have failed to do—the Bible calls it “missing the mark”—describes the reality that things are not as they should be: we are self-obsessed, broken, fearful, and oppressive. It’s what Jesus came to save us from.

  • We believe our salvation is bound up in one another.

    God calls us into relationship with one another, and tells us that salvation looks like liberated prisoners, healed people, oppression abolished, and thriving ecology; where all can be joyful, free of shame, animated by the Spirit, and held by community. It is what Jesus came to save us for.

  • We believe that grace is the love, honesty, and compassion that God gives and shows us in Jesus.

    Each person’s value is infinite, and has nothing to do with their productivity. We encourage spiritual practices like prayer, the arts, reading the Bible, participating in small groups, spending time outdoors, tithing, fasting, and many other activities – not because we have to earn God’s grace but because they help us to engage the Spirit’s imagination and live more fully into God’s purpose.

  • We believe the goal of church is not to make people more religious, but to help people fall more in love with God and therefore become more fully human.

    We see throughout scripture that God is more interested in right relationships than right beliefs – and that you can belong before you believe.

 

A Testimony

 

Denominational Affiliation

We are a multi-denominational community where people from diverse spiritual traditions and experiences – or no religious experience – can meaningfully connect with others to practice a faith that seeks deeper understanding of Jesus’ message and participation with God’s activity in the world.

We are affiliated with the United Methodist Church, a Christian Protestant denomination that emphasizes God’s love for all people, the intersection of spirituality and justice, and the calling to make a difference in the world.

How We Got Started

On a brisk October day in 2007, Trey Hall and Christian Coon got together for coffee at a Corner Bakery in downtown Chicago. They had been friends for several years and, after completing a two-year training for United Methodist pastors, they began to imagine the possibilities of planting a new kind of church in Chicago…

What if there was a church that was joyfully grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that was fully affirming of all people regardless of their identities and was multi-site as a way to nurture intimate communities that reflected Chicago’s great neighborhoods? And what if God was calling them to start this church as a team? They began to put these dreams down on paper and invited others to join them in this dream. Less than two years later, in the summer of 2009, they officially started the work of planting this new church.

In spring of 2010, 150 people showed up for the launch of Urban Village Church’s first worship site in the South Loop neighborhood and a movement was born.