About Us

 

Our Mission Statement

Alamosa Presbyterian Church is a welcoming family, striving to follow Christ by loving unconditionally, making peace, seeking justice, actively reaching out with hope to a troubled world, and gratefully celebrating God’s abundance.

 

Alamosa Presbyterian Church is a community:

• that seeks – listening for what God’s word has to say to us and for us through the study of scripture, by examining our experiences and using our intellect, and through connections to the church’s tradition.
• that values diversity – we believe that Godcreated every person in God’s image, and that our community is enriched by being inclusive.
• that strives to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
• is joyful – grateful for the many gifts God has provided.
• is loving – we desire to live out the love that Christ showed to the world in our actions.

 

Our History

Presbyterians organized the first Christian congregation in Alamosa in 1878, the year of the town’s founding. In 1908, Second Presbyterian Church was formed by petition to the Presbytery as a Spanish-speaking congregation. Second Presbyterian later changed its name to Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. The two congregations united in 1966 to form Alamosa Presbyterian Church. Despite widespread racial prejudice in the Valley, our united congregation cherishes our Spanish and Anglo mixture and seeks to maintain the heritage of both cultures and of both previous congregations. 

 

Who Are Presbyterians?

Presbyterians trace themselves back to the Reformation and John Calvin. Our tradition tells us that God is sovereign – God is what God will be.  Our job is to seek to understand God and our part in the God story.  We do this by seeking to model our lives after Jesus, and opening ourselves to the movement of the Spirit in our lives.  We have to approach this with a lot of humility, because we can often get it wrong. (A quick glance at history proves this point – the church was wrong on race, it was wrong on gender, it was wrong on sexuality!) As such, the old adage “the church reformed, always reforming” rings true.  We also have a strong understanding that God is at work in the church at large. The Spirit speaks through our differences, and so, even though it would sometimes be easier just to close our ears to what others have to say, as a denomination we seek to discern God’s voice in the whole body.