At St Stephen's, we strive to recognize and nurture the Christ in ourselves and each person that we encounter along the way. Join us for service on Sunday to experience for yourself the fellowship of Christ. Our mission as a parish is to open our hearts to God and to share Christ’s unconditional love with the world. We do this by following three pathways:
- Welcoming: We invite all to join us at every stage in their spiritual journeys.
- Worshiping: We cultivate a living tradition of liturgy and a life made holy by the sacraments.
- Working: We share our abundance, we strive for justice, and we accept our calling to protect God’s creation.
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church is a congregation of families and singles, children and seniors, and a diversity of ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, interests, and backgrounds. We are followers of Jesus, guided by His teaching and example to love God and our neighbor. We welcome all people regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, racial background, mental or physical ability, recovery, political belief, economic condition, and all other expressions of what it means to be human. We invite you to worship with us and walk with us no matter where you are on your spiritual journey.
We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional territory and homelands of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (ytt) Northern Chumash people, the first peoples of San Luis Obispo, who are still here, and we honor with gratitude the land itself and the life of the Chumash Tribe. Acknowledging the land is a transformative act that works to undo the intentional erasure of indigenous peoples.
The Vestry adopts the following as a statement of essential parish values:
- A sense of community that includes our parish family but extends to the larger community of San Luis Obispo.
- A spirit of inclusion that reaches beyond a passive acceptance of difference to actively embrace what makes us each unique.
- A thirst for spirituality that believes in everyday things made holy by the sacred acts of creation, incarnation, and the continuing transformation of the sacraments;
- A practice of stewardship as “our personal response to God’s generosity in the way we share our resources of time, talent, and money”
