Qui sommes nous / Who are we?

QUI SOMMES NOUS? / WHO ARE WE?

There are many possible ways to answer this question.

WE ARE, BY NAME, GRACE CHURCH

We are by our tradition, Anglicans. We are by our Baptism, living members of the Body of Christ – hands, feet, eyes and ears – at Worship, Education, and Charity Outreach. Finally, we hope to be signs of God’s love and grace.

WE ARE A WELCOMING COMMUNITY OF FAITH IN THE HERAULT

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

Whoever you are, whatever your background or religious leanings, we invite you to join us and share in our fellowship, our prayers, our programs, our church.

At Grace Church, as in churches throughout the Convocation, we aspire to follow in the example of our Lord, opening our doors to all who worship Jesus Christ. Our Table is the Lord’s Table. We offer the sacraments, including the Holy Communion to all who are baptized. We invite you, your friends and your family to worship with us and consider Grace to be your spiritual home.

We seek to offer an element of familiarity in the service in the knowledge that we all come from a variety of traditions and cultures. We strive to help everyone to feel comfortable and at home in our services, whatever their first language or faith journey. We worship in the Anglican tradition. We incorporate selected liturgies from a variety of Anglican prayer books; a bilingual English-French version of the Book of Common Prayer is used for our worship service to better embrace the French community in which we worship.

In the midst of our services across Europe, it is not uncommon to hear the Lord’s Prayer said simultaneously in multiple languages. It is surprising when one hears this for the first time; still, it gives a new richness to our understanding of what it means to be the Body of Christ.

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE CONVOCATION OF EPISCOPAL CHURCHES IN EUROPE

Grace Church is a mission congregation that is part of a larger community of churches in Europe, The Convocation of Episcopal Churches. Our community just celebrated its 150^th anniversary of the planting of our founding Convocation church, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris!

Through our membership in the Convocation, we are enriched by the many educational and spiritual seminars and retreats offered to help us on our faith journey and support us in our ministry. Although a mission, we are able to partake of some of the same experiences that larger congregations are blessed with. We embrace the sense of family that comes from being part of a network of churches and missions scattered throughout Europe.

The Convocation is a microcosm of the wider Anglican Communion, characterized by many different nationalities and cultures and languages. Our churches and ministries of the Convocation -- located in France, Italy, and Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium -- have undertaken the important task of translating selected Liturgies into French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Altogether, there are some 4000 of us, worshipping in six countries across Europe. Like Grace Church, some of our communities are small -– with fewer than 50 members -- while our Cathedral in the centre of Paris has more than 1000 members!

The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe http://www.tec-europe.org/

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE WORLD-WIDE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

The Episcopal Church -- a church of the world with congregations on 5 continents and in 16 nations –- is a constituent member of the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Communion is the third largest international denomination, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. We have over 80 million members, spread across 38 Provinces in 164 countries. The Communion is not held together by a formal constitution or international church law, but rather by a shared heritage and what are termed "bonds of affection," by formal "Instruments of Communion" and through our relationship withthe ABC. This sense of common identity is nourished through prayerful encounters and diocesan “companion relationships”, liens that allow us to be better partners in Gods’ mission. The Archbishop of Canterbury plays a leading role in nurturing the interdependent life of the Communion