WELCOME!
Thank you for your interest in St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Simi Valley, California. We hope that you will find this web site useful for finding information about our church.
We would be pleased if you would join us for worship. We pray that all who visit may know the presence of Christ and that you will want to make St. Francis your church home.
Please feel free to send email to our Vicar, Rev. Steven J. Dean at StFrancischurch@roadrunner.com
To know us, all you have to do is look at our mission statement.
As followers of Jesus we try to adhere to God’s law, study scriptures, and, as we were taught by Jesus, reach out, with true compassion, not only to the spiritually healthy, but to the marginalized in society as well.
In following God’s law we believe we must be prayerful. This means that prayer has a priority in our daily life. Time with God is time well spent. We must also be steadfast and disciplined in our worship. Attending church regularly is important in maintaining a healthy relationship with God. In church we obtain fellowship with and encouragement from other Christians, but they also become sources of learning for us as each shares a particular journey of faith. As we gain wisdom through the triumphs and the failures of others, we are encouraged to continue our own journeys. We realize we are simply all at a different stage in our personal walk of faith.
In studying scriptures, we must foster good personal study habits, then share our experiences and knowledge with others. We value the study of scripture equally with the other parts of faith. Ministers take a vow at ordination, “I believe that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation.” This means that the Gospel always is the last word when we have a question, but to understand the answer God has provided there, we must be diligent and thorough in our study. We believe that nothing can be understood fully when taken out of context.
In being compassionate we must first consider a person a child of God and then act as the situation dictates. One of the unique properties of our faith tradition is the lack of judgment of others. We believe that the scriptures tell us that God will be our judge, and no one else. One of our goals then, is to love first and ask questions later. This means that we do not have to agree with every other Christian, we only have to love them. God will do the rest.
In living this way, we believe that we are following Jesus’ example. Jesus did not sit and eat with the mighty, He ate with those that others could not or would not tolerate. All are welcome at the Lord’s table at St. Francis, because we don’t judge one’s worthiness to be there, we only try to help that person as they take a personal walk in faith.