Welcome to St. Andrew Lutheran in Beaverton, OR!

Welcome to our newest RIC Congregation, St. Andrew Lutheran in Beaverton, OR!

St. Andrew Lutheran Church is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At the core of the Evangelical Lutheran tradition is the good news of the abundant grace of God in Jesus Christ. St. Andrew seeks to embody that grace in our ministry and mission.

Here you will discover a place where you can come to give thanks, to pray, and to celebrate together in word and music.

Here you will encounter fellowship, care and love provided by people committed to each other, to their community and to God.

Here you will find a place of comfort and a place to find your way again when you may have lost the path. St. Andrew offers the opportunity to minister to others and to respond together to the challenges of our times, be it hunger, homelessness, joblessness, environmental degradation, natural disaster, war, or racism.

Here you will discover and nurture your talents in service to God.

Here you will find a place for spiritual growth, education and renewal. You will find a journey of discovery that begins with our community at baptism and extends to the community beyond our walls and often beyond our borders.

Here you will find a Place of Grace.

Illinois’ Augustana College to allow same-gender ceremonies on campus

Illinois’ Augustana College to allow same-gender ceremonies on campus

 

Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, announced in late November that it would allow same-gender weddings and blessings of unions on campus.

 

Augustana president, Steve Bahls

In a letter sent to students, faculty and staff, the college’s president, Steve Bahls, explained that a recommendation had come earlier in the fall from the college’s chaplains, the Revs. Richard Priggie and Kristen Glass Perez, to consent to same-gender weddings on campus.

 

“The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), to which the college is related, permits same-gender weddings so long as the local congregation consents,” Bahls wrote. “Because Augustana is a church-related institution and not a congregation, the Bishop of our Northern Illinois Synod of the ELCA [Gary Wollersheim] determined that it was up to me as President of the College to provide or not provide consent. I decided to consent.”

 

Augustana is one of the first major institutions of the ELCA that is not a congregation to publicly welcome same-gender weddings and blessings within its jurisdiction. ReconcilingWorks applauded Bahls for taking a public and prophetic stance on marriage as one of the ELCA’s leaders of higher education and for helping to put the ELCA’s policy allowing same-gender ceremonies, enacted in 2009, into practice within the denomination.

 

Augustana became a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) institution in 2004 and is one of only two RIC colleges in the ELCA. Illinois has allowed civil unions – but not same-gender marriages – since 2011.