Our Core Values
Who We Are
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Anglo-Catholic Worship
We may be High Church, but we are not high-brow. Grounded in Holy Scripture, we are reminded after each service to go forth in the world to love and serve others. We welcome people as they are, regardless of what they wear or how they found us.
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Justice Orientation
Recent social justice efforts include our support for Missouri Jobs with Justice, an interfaith prayer service on gun violence, advocating for the rights of transgender people, and micro loans to neighbors in need. We join with nearby congregations to neighborhood with compassion, equity, and love as we pursue social and economic justice.
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Service to Others
We are well known for our hospitality: our commitment to the unhoused and hungry; to LGBTQ+ members looking for an affirming spiritual community; to our neighbors. Our church’s most significant outreach program is the Trinity Food Ministry (TFM), which has been active for 50 years.
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A Place to Belong & Create
Trinity is a safe place where community and connection to one another drive everything we do, from worship to social activities. We have a lively and fun parish life and a particularly strong appreciation for visual and musical arts.
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Food & Spiritual Nourishment
Feeding the hungry is our primary ministry, but food is part of all we do; we regularly break bread together. Food is more than sustenance; it is care and connection.
Historical Land and Labor Acknowledgment
In humility, we recognize and acknowledge that we at Trinity Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri worship and live on the traditional ancestral lands of the Osage Nation, the Illiniwek/Peoria Tribe, the O-Gah-Pah (Quapaw) Tribe, the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, and other First Peoples. We recognize our mutual dependence upon and benefit from this land; we proclaim our solidarity with and our debt to the Peoples who first claimed and improved this land as their home. We acknowledge our complicity in the process of colonization that dispossessed the First Peoples from their ancestral lands. We affirm our commitment to stand with indigenous communities today and henceforth as they seek justice and resist continued threats to their sovereignty and humanity.
We are also cognizant that the history of the Episcopal Church is intertwined with the history of colonialism and slavery in the United States. More than four centuries ago, the first Africans were brought to the Americas and enslaved. Two centuries ago, enslaved and indigenous persons contributed to the exploration of this state by Lewis and Clark. Our state’s history is entangled with both the Missouri Compromise making this state officially a slave state, and the cases of Scott v. Emerson that petitioned for Dred and Harriet Scott’s emancipation. We acknowledge the tragic legacy of slavery in our diocese, and the blood, sweat, and tears of enslaved people that soak the earth beneath our feet in Missouri. This legacy persists today as we continue to work towards racial justice, equity, liberation, and community, here in Missouri and across the Episcopal Church.
--Based on the Historical Land Acknowledgement for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, revised Sept. 22, 2022