Frequently Asked Questions

Over 200 people worship at Christ Lutheran every week, with approximately half that number active weekly in our various ministries. We have over 500 members. We are blessed to be a vibrant and growing community of faith where we care about each and every member.

At Christ Lutheran, you will see some dressed up and some dressed casual, but we have no expectations for attire. As Jesus welcomed all, regardless of their appearance or dress, so do we!

We are proud to be a multi-generational church. We have people of all ages at Christ Lutheran. You will hear the voices of our many children, shouting joyously in the hallways and lending their voices in worship in our Gloria & Angelicas Choirs. You will see our youth engaged in listening to the sermons and growing in their faith. You will see people in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s joyfully connected through intergenerational friendships!

You will find families of all varieties here. We have singles, partnered and married couples with and without children, single-parent families, families with two parents, and every possible combination you could imagine. All are welcome regardless of the relationship configuration or any past broken relationships.

You will find a variety of people from all walks of life, some ethnic diversity (we are striving to grow in that area), and people from different faith backgrounds. While many of us identify as Lutherans, others started off at Christ Lutheran as curious Catholics, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and agnostics. And yes, we know we are beginning to sound like a broken record, but ALL are welcome regardless of how they do or don’t identify themselves religiously.

Our worship services are energetic, joyful, and follow the ancient liturgy of the church (group confession and absolution, chanting the Kyrie or singing the Gloria, readings from scripture, creatively presenting the Psalms, hearing a sermon, reflecting our community and world in the prayers of the people, sharing in Holy Communion, receiving final blessings and being sent into the world to share the love we have received). We also sing the hymns of the church. We have a wonderful organist, choir directors, Sanctuary Choir (adults), Angelicus Choir (k-4th), Gloria choir (5th-8th), and Brass Ensemble. You will regularly hear works by Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rutter, Parker, and more. So we are steeped in tradition at Christ Lutheran, and we celebrate sharing the same liturgy of the church from 2000 years ago. But there’s also lots of innovation here! We include poetry, quotes, and images in our bulletins. We have a resident liturgical artist, Mary Overstreet, who designs art installations to evoke the theme of a given liturgical season. We incorporate community art and hands-on activities into worship. With each new Sunday and every new liturgical season, you never know what new things we will be doing to enhance our ancient worship life. Seasonal planning teams help us to brainstorm and prepare. If you are interested in serving on a planning team, please contact the church office.

At Christ Lutheran we are also VERY serious about preaching. Our pastor works diligently each week to engage scripture and bring it to life. She connects the Word of God with our everyday lives, and employs a “faith seeking understanding” approach. Her sermons aren’t afraid to address the challenges scripture poses and to admit that sometimes we struggle with certain passages. Overall, she preaches with an emphasis on God’s grace for each and every last one of us. Our pastor is also ALWAYS open to hearing your ideas about their preaching. If something in a sermon leaves you with a question or a comment, she wants to hear about it.

Pray without ceasing, get involved and consider offering a one-time or ongoing financial gift.

We encourage families to bring their children to worship. In fact, we encourage them to sit on or near the front row so that the children can see and be active in our services. We offer activity bags at the entrance to our church. During the summer, we have Children’s Sermons offered by our Director of Faith Formation or pastor every Sunday. During the school year, we encourage our children to attend Sunday School at 9:15 a.m. and participate in our Stepping Stones ministry. We have a nursery during worship and Sunday School for our youngest members. Nothing about our ministry to children comes from a “dumbed-down” approach. We translate challenging theological concepts into language, metaphors, and illustrations that make sense to our youngest members. We believe that our children and youth are as much the church as our older participants.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus ate with sinners and those whom others scorned. He still does. None of us is worthy, except by God’s grace. No matter what you have done or your present condition, Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.

If you attend worship or any other event at Christ Lutheran and feel as if you “don’t fit” or feel uncomfortable in any way, please let us know. We strive to welcome everyone, but we realize that we fail at this sometimes. So . . . if it happens, feel free to call us out on it. Help us be transformed into the kind of community we claim to be and want to be!

  1. We are experimenting with new ways to do and be a church that makes sense in an evolving and urban world of compassionate and engaged folks.
  2. We are gospel-centered and always emphasize grace and forgiveness above all else.
  3. We are bringing ancient liturgy to life in new ways, recontextualizing it to speak to today’s people.
  4. We are challenging ourselves to reclaim the word “Christian.”
  5. We view Scripture as God’s word and normative for our life of faith, and yet this does not mean that we cannot question it, struggle with it, or that we have to claim it as inerrant.
  6. We believe in doubt and asking questions. We don’t judge those who struggle with faith but embrace them as fellow sojourners.
  7. We believe liturgy, music, art, writing, Word, and sacrament intertwine to create meaningful worship. Aesthetics and theology matter.
  8. We challenge ourselves to never divorce our intellectual lives from our spiritual lives but to interconnect them and use each aspect to challenge and engage the other in further growth.
  9. We are constantly seeking to increase our work in the fields of service and justice in San Antonio, the nation, and the world, and we give 20% of the offerings we receive to such causes.
  10. Oh yeah, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, we are serious when we say we welcome ALL people.