About Our Church
Emmanuel Lutheran Church is a congregation with a Christ-centered focus. We seek to grow as disciples of Jesus in fellowship formed by the Holy Spirit. We worship, witness, and serve together in faith, hope and love, as we are empowered to do so by God. We have been a neighborhood church in Walla Walla for 125 years (in 2013), located two blocks west of Pioneer Park on the corner of Clinton and Lincoln, but we reach out beyond our neighborhood and local community, in order to support people in need and missionaries who work in remote places.
We think that the people of the United States and the world need the good news of Jesus Christ, which the Holy Spirit uses to change and transform individual lives, families and communities. We are a people formed by this good news. We reach out to help and embrace others because Jesus is alive and is the center of our lives and our fellowship.
In order to help people understand who Jesus is and why he is important, we offer instruction and study time for adults and for youth. We gather to worship weekly and encourage one another to stay close to Jesus and welcome the infilling love and power of his Spirit.
We are also a sacramental church, following the understanding of the ancient church that baptism initiates us into membeship of God's covenant family, and the eucharist or holy communion is a meeting place where the Lord meets with us to forgive and strengthen us for our journey.
We are a confessional church that believes we should hold to the primary teachings of the Bible, given by prophets and apostles who were inspired by God's Spirit and spoke with authority. The Apostles and Nicene Creeds, as well as the Lutheran Confessions, guide our interpretation of the Bible, but the Bible is our supreme guide and authority, and may correct any human idea or faulty interpretation.
We welcome you to join with us. We are ordinary people but we are also God's people, sinful yet justified, and together we seek to reflect God's grace. We welcome the opportunity to get to know you better.
Although we are an independent congregation as a legal entity and organization, we recognize the need to be in fellowship with a larger and wider network of churches who share the same confessional outlook. This is imortant for both encouragement and accountability. Therefore we currently belong to a denomination called Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC), which is not top-heavy with administration and is not intrusive regarding the local decisions of our congregation, but which does supply pastors when there is a pulpit vacancy.