Who is All Souls Cville?

A community of people learning the way of Jesus through attentiveness, hospitality, restoration, and shalom.

Our Rule of Life

We have a Rule of Life that gives shape to what this Jesus-way looks like for us. Confirmed annually, our Rule affirms our attentiveness to Jesus Christ in the core issues of practical living (money, sex, power) and obedience to the shared life we believe God has called us to (a people of God’s hospitality, God’s restoration and God’s shalom). 

  • Because we are a community in the way of Jesus, we commit to be obedient to Jesus, submitting to him as Lord over our life, including our money, our sexuality and our power.

    We practice attentiveness to Christ by co-creating liturgies because God uses them to encounter us.

  • Because the Trinity forms us as a people designed for relationship, we commit ourselves to generous hospitality by living with one another in tangible expressions of community.

    We practice generous hospitality by opening our homes and our tables, because being with others in meals, stories, and shared life is being with God.

  • Because the Gospel renews everything, beginning by awakening our heart to true life, we will open ourselves to see and hear God, allowing God to restore our mind, body and soul.

    We practice restoration by receiving God’s healing through prayer, sacrament, forgiveness, and formation because God is making us more fully human.

  • Because the Kingdom of God rules over everything, we will join God’s work of bringing shalom to our home, Charlottesville and to the world.

    We practice shalom by serving children, walking with the poor, working for justice, and seeking the flourishing of our community because God’ s is already present.

What We Believe

All Souls does not hold a formal doctrinal statement. Instead, we are a community centered on the radical presence of Jesus and the truths he has revealed to the world. We seek to be creedal in our foundations, diverse in our perspectives, sacramental in our worship, curious in our learning, and humble in our theology. Our shared life begins and ends with Jesus, and we walk together in the mystery, beauty, and breadth of the Christian faith.

  • We are a creedal church, affirming the Apostles and Nicene creeds. We seek to worship and be continually shaped by the reality that God has revealed Godself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

  • We are also a diverse church, recognizing that there are many important and complicated matters that the Creeds do not answer for us—and that the global Church is wrestling to answer as well. We do not shy from difficult conversations, and our leadership reflects a myriad of viewpoints on controversial matters. However, we believe that as we declare Jesus as Lord over our lives—and over our theology—that we can find a unity around Jesus’ Table that rejects the antagonisms and polarities that our world (and church world) often assumes.

  • We are a sacramental church, shaped by weekly Eucharist. We believe that God is truly present with us, in the person of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit as we worship, as we pray, as we pass the peace, as we hear the Scriptures, as we receive Christ’s body and blood.

  • We are a curious church, assuming that God welcomes our questions with delight, even as we discover how God’s questions are always better than our own. We desire to foster humble conviction and generosity, believing that the way we hold the truth is itself an essential portion of the truth.

  • We seek to be a church that always bends our knee—our hopes, our desires, our loyalties—to Jesus Christ. We seek to be a church that announces the healing presence of God in the midst of our pain, our turmoil, our injustices, our poverty, our success, our joy, ousorrow. To borrow from Fleming Rutledge, we believe God is the subject of every sentence.

Frequently asked questions

  • We were drawn to the name All Souls for several reasons. First, All Souls connotes roots, a connection to the historic church. It is a name common among a number of the older Christian movements. We hope to be part of a Christian community that is simply entering the long story of what God has done in his world, how God’s people have long been living in his world. Even as an artistic and creative new expression of church community, we resist fad and gimmick. We are not reinventing the church. We are incarnating the old, beautiful gospel into a new context, a new day. We want our ethos to reflect how we look back as much as how we look forward. Second, All Souls speaks of openness, generosity. We are for all people, the entire city, every heart, every broken family, every broken story – every soul. Third, we think our name evokes an artistic quality. The beauty of creation (and new creation, redemption) will be a constant theme in our community.

  • We are not. Since our earliest days we have been in conversation with and informed by many Christian theological traditions and in harmony with historic, orthodox Christian faith.

    For this reason we often refer to ourselves as “inter-denominational” or “ecuminical” which simply describes a desire to move toward what brings togethers various denominations, traditions, and practices rather than moving toward what divides them. We hope to hold a posture that moves toward unity as was Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

  • People of all abilities, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, political leanings, races, religious traditions, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds are welcomed and celebrated as expressions of God’s creativity.

  • Our community hopes to offer another way… The Way of Jesus. We strongly discourage culture war approaches, as they are only meant to divide & inflame. “Distance breeds suspicion. Proximity breeds empathy” -Tyler Merritt. As we follow our Teacer, Jesus, we look for the image of our Maker on every single human. Today, we must change the narrative, seeking to understand more than to be understood… The Way of Jesus is better than a “left & right” or so-called “center”. This is the Way.

  • Every gift supports the ministry of All Souls.

    Our Board of Elders, made up of lay leaders affirmed by the All Souls community, oversees our finances with care and transparency. They help set priorities, approve budgets, and guide our life together with clarity and accountability.

    Our clergy and lay leaders work diligently to steward every resource entrusted to us, ensuring that our shared ministry remains rooted, sustainable, and faithful.