Humble Beginnings

We first started gathering at Dan & Elise Claire's house in Northwest DC
during the summer of 2002. What we didn't have in terms of money,
experience, or prior planning, we made up for in terms of vision! At the
beginning of Advent 2003, we moved into a larger house near Key Bridge.
Then our dear friends at Christ our Shepherd Church opened their doors
to us on Ash Wednesday 2004, and we have been there ever since.

A Cruciform Vision

When we first started, we were pretty idealistic. We thought that a
healthy church should be two dimensional: both vertical and horizontal.
The vertical dimension of the church is the one through which people
renew their souls through knowing and worshipping Almighty God. The
horizontal dimension is the way the church reaches out to meet the
needs of fellow human beings wherever they may be. Most churches
seem to focus on one or the other. We wanted to do both. Taken
together, the horizontal and vertical dimensions formed the cruciform
(cross-shaped) vision of the Church of the Resurrection.

We're still pretty idealistic. We still have a cruciform vision.

Global

We're part of an international network of Christians known as the Anglican
Communion. This network grew out of the missionary expansion of the
Church of England over the past 500 years, and now consists of 38 self-
governing provinces around the world, with some 70 million baptised
members in 164 countries.

Rooted in Forgiveness & Reconciliation

The Church of the Resurrection is a parish of the Anglican Church of
Rwanda. In 1994, one-tenth of the population of Rwanda--roughly one
million people--were slaughtered in a horrific genocide. In the aftermath,
Christians began to go into the prisons and share the good news of Jesus
with the perpetrators, including those who murdered, maimed and raped
their very family members. In human terms, the resulting forgiveness and
reconciliation between criminals and victims is simply unfathomable. But
for Christians, this is the same amazing grace that we have found in God,
who sent his only son to die a gruesome death so that we might be
reconciled with him.

As a part of the Rwandan church, this story of faith, forgiveness and
reconciliation is the DNA of the Church of the Resurrection.