Welcome to Desert Garden Church. Desert Garden is a Christian congregation founded in 1979. We are committed to the serious study of ancient and modern Christian learning, and to the beautiful music and spiritual richness of prayer. We are a congregation of spiritual seekers, loving tradition, embracing modernity, animated by the Christ mission of improving the world.
We are a caring, welcoming community in which everyone can learn, celebrate, and grow together. We recognize that different people will feel at home with us by walking through different doors of church life. Some will do it through prayer or Bible study, others through their social action, communal outreach, environmental justice, social activities, or music.
Some thoughts about Theology
If you are wondering who your God is, consider this… Everyone has a religion and everyone has at least one God. A religion is a life-philosophy that governs your perspective and behavior. Even Atheism is a religion, with the self-being the object of worship. Your religion defines your perspective as to your place in the Universe and why you exist, your purpose. Your God is who or what you worship. Your God is the greatest desire of your heart, your source of pleasure, energy, and peace. The God(s) in your life determine where you direct your thoughts, imagination, time, and money.
Christianity is talking about God who unites all humankind through Jesus Christ in the Spirit of love, bringing us in the communion with the Source of Life.
We celebrate Christ's Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and live by it. It is a gift, which radically alters our attitude toward everything in this world, including death. The church has been established in this world in order to celebrate the New Life. The church has no purpose, no `religious life' separate from the world.
Christianity is communal. The Christian perspective sees the individual with others; there is no person that is ever alone. Everything stands in relationship to the other. Christianity refuses to separate Truths into categories and then study them as self-contained units. No human person can exist as an isolated individual. Where there is love, there is self-discovery and union. Where there is selfishness and pride, there is deceit and division. The Church as a living organism of which Christ Himself is a member. Christ came to redeem the whole person: body, soul, and spirit (1Thess. 5:24), Christ likewise will redeem all of creation as well, in the Last Day summing up all things in Himself (Eph. 1:9, 10). It is for this reason that the Christian does not erect an impenetrable wall between what is sacred (“spirit”) and what is profane (“matter”). God has created both, sustains both, and one day will restore both.
Although firmly supported by scholarship, Christianity does not trust in scholarship per se as its basis of faith. We would say that it is impossible to encapsulate the Christian faith into intellectual propositions. God will always transcend every one of man’s finite doctrinal formulations. For this reason, we shy away from making any creed or “confession” as the definition of the Desert Garden Christianity. No Creed or set of doctrines, no matter how comprehensive, can ever fully explain the life in Christ. It is not the intellect that brings revelation, but union with Christ and His Church. Doctrine can be a “symbol” that points to Him Who is the Way, but it is not the way. Doctrine may be a vessel, but it is never the Water the vessel contains.
It is our mission to meet the diverse spiritual, religious, educational, and social needs of our members within the framework of Christianity. We strive to build unity with our fellow Christians of all persuasions and affiliations and the community at large, in a spirit of love and respect. We are proud of our active membership committee, which has contributed significantly to bringing new members to our congregation and integrating them into the life of the community. We see our Church as a spiritual home to Christians of all backgrounds. Desert Garden tries to reach a diverse group of Christians, who reflect many different religious backgrounds, personal circumstances, and interests.
Living our Faith in the terms of Compassion
Kindness and compassion transcend social class and political boundaries. Our congregation's mission is to unite all of our members in a common commitment to philanthropy and kindness, regardless of their political affiliations or social status.
Our special outreach and Care Ministries, led by Diane Schrecengost, continues to offer support services to people with illness, bereaved individuals, and their families during times of crisis.
These are some of the lessons of mortality and of aging – but in Christianity, these lessons should be part of everyday life for all of us, healthy or ill, at any age. Maybe that is why it is sometimes said that a society can be judged by how it treats its elderly. Not only because we are mandated to care for the elderly as for any potentially vulnerable members of society, but also because our attitudes towards aging are directly related to our attitudes towards all of life.
It is no secret that with increased age come difficult losses – loss of physical abilities and strengths, loss of loved ones, and sometimes, loss of independence or of mental abilities. Christianity teaches us to sanctify time, to see the blessing in each moment. The fact that we have less time remaining does not mean that the moments are less or that we are less. One mystical scholar suggests that old age can be a spiritual time of our life, when we can slow down, stop focusing on creating material things, and instead treasure each moment as sacred and precious, precisely because it is finite. Precisely because it is finite, it can connect us to infinity, to the eternal.
Each day that we live, less time remains, but each day we have more. We acknowledge that many of the hardships and the blessings we will face are out of our control, they are in God’s hands. However, how we respond to those hardships and blessings is in our hands. So, in the words of an ancient poet, we ask God, teach us to number our days, teach us to make each day count, so that we may get for ourselves a heart of wisdom.
Desert Garden provides programs that meet a wide range of congregants' needs. We offer a warm environment for Bible study, prayer, and developing a close community. Our services are participatory and led by our Pastor and congregants. Our classes and programs encourage further involvement in the church. With our growing membership, the congregation is home to families and individuals with deep roots in the area as well as many newcomers. We welcome you and extend an open invitation to come by and visit.
Thank you for visiting - we hope you will decide to join us.
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