Who We Are
A Group of People in Love with Jesus: Jesus defines us. He is our groom and we are His bride, His city, His sanctuary, His body.
Jesus is our vision and worship is our strategy.
Surrendered to Jesus in worship, He tells us who we are, fills us with Himself and impregnates us with His life. We are called to live His life as His body in this world; His living temple; His sanctuary. The Church—any church—is His creation. We love because we have first been loved by Jesus. The Church is people wrapped around Jesus Christ and Him crucified, people transfixed by the Relentless Love of God, people filled with Love. God is Love.
People Enamored with God’s Grace: Jesus is God’s Grace incarnate in human flesh. At the intersection of time and eternity Jesus bore our sin, sorrow and shame upon a Roman cross. There He descended into Hell to exhibit the depths of His love for all, redeem us with His Blood, and romance us to Himself.
God is always better than you thought.
The Love of Jesus is always deeper than you know.
And the Spirit is everywhere working the wonders of Mercy.
A Real Church in This unReal World: Jesus is the Truth. His Spirit is the “Spirit of Truth.” We cannot arrive at the Truth with out being Truth-full. We don’t want to “play church,” but be the real church. We’re like the stinky manger in which the Christ child is placed. When we’re honest about the mess, we can be honest about God’s Grace. We are the place in which the Christ is born. We are the sanctuary in which the Glory of God is destined to dwell. The Sanctuary must be a safe place to surrender our mess, but not a safe place to hide our mess; a safe place for truth, but not a safe place for lies; a safe place for honesty, but not for arrogance, self-centeredness and pride. God will not abandon us to our illusions, but will transform us into His Sanctuary.
A Place to Wrestle the Word: We want to be “a biblical church.” We believe The Scriptures to be “authoritative on all matters to which they speak.” Jesus is The Word who inhabits the written word, and uses that word to wrestle the lies from our hearts and His Truth—Himself—into our hearts. Jacob wrestled the God-man and the God-man named him Israel (see Genesis 32:22-32), which means “wrestles with God.” We wrestle with Jesus. He can be a bit scary, but He is always Good. He wrestles the lies right out of us and gives us a new name.
A Church Without Walls: The Good News is not bound by human walls. We do not want to be defined by terms like ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal,’ ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat.’ We want to avoid denominational walls, walls created by movements and fads, racial walls, socio-economic walls, relational walls and even physical walls. The Sanctuary is NOT a building. And we are sure that the Gospel is not bound by any building or human institution. We desire to give the Gospel away. “’Jerusalem will be a city without walls… And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within’” (Zech.2:4-5).
A Church Within THE CHURCH, Containing Many Churches: The Sanctuary is a small part of the Church Universal, and within The Sanctuary there are many churches—a church is two or three gathered in His name. The last weekend of the month is “Community Life Weekend” during which you’ll hear special messages, have the opportunity to sign up for various kinds of Community Groups, and share a meal together after the service. By organizing into smaller groups, we hope to nurture authentic community.
A Church "Centered" in the City: We believe that we have been called as a church to the city. “The city” is an expression of diversity in unity. “The City” anticipates the “Celestial City,” the New Jerusalem. That City is a creation of Grace which transforms differences from liabilities into blessings. We feel that we’ve been called to a geographic center which is the city, yet we’ve been called from all over the Denver Metropolitan area. Through a worshiping congregation in the Foothills, as well as our hub Downtown Denver, and through Community Groups in various locations, we anticipate and celebrate our eternal home.
Just Enough Structure to Let Good Things Run Wild: We hope to provide a minimal amount of structure through Community Groups and a few Sanctuary wide programs in order to provide a maximal amount of room for the life of Christ to run wild. That may be frustrating at times. When it is, we hope that you would ask the Lord, “What do you want to do through me?” We are painfully/joyfully aware that anything truly good only happens through the Spirit of Jesus implanted like a seed in the womb of a yearning heart. When we worship our Groom, we give birth to his Life: messy, painful, confusing—but profoundly good.
A Context for Community: Real community is God’s miraculous creation, yet we feel called to provide a context for that miracle. “The Sanctuary” (the institution) is a context for the Sanctuary (the miracle). We hope that many would be willing to take a journey. (See “Community Groups” brochure for details on how to get involved). Our particular path is certainly not necessary, however community is. Heaven is community.
Mystery: The real Sanctuary is God’s creation and far better than anything we could cook up or even imagine. If you’re new, you’re more than welcome to hop on board and take this journey with us. Let’s enjoy the ride. No matter what, our destination is good. And when we love, in some very real way, our destination is already here. We are The Sanctuary.
