Community
Our vision is to be a worshiping community in the heart of downtown Knoxville. As a Christian community worshiping in the heart of downtown Knoxville, we recognize that the health of the downtown is vital to the larger city. We strive to promote beauty, safety, and justice for everyone in our city. Our church members, both individually and corporately, commit to support the well-being of downtown through our prayer, our work, our study, our play and our daily lives.

Community Team
Team Leader: Dawn Briere

The Community Team seeks to help our congregation grow into a family that experiences life together in a healthy manner in both joy and sorrow through table fellowship, play, celebration and compassionate care for one another in time of need by watching and listening for where the Spirit is at work and joining in there. Specifically, this team focuses on the following:

1. Modeling our life together much like an actual biological family: Meals together, playing together, celebrating together, mourning together both in larger and smaller groups, with some being gender specific – the small group is our primary nuclear family
2. Developing and deepening relationships within the body beyond the small group
3. Assisting small groups in providing care for families in need of care, or in the case of those who have no small group to coordinate such care

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Study
The Study Value: We affirm our desire to be a school of Christ, a learning community, where, through the study of the church’s teachings, we fall in love with God and with one another and therefore with our neighbor as well. We affirm that God’s Word is fresh and alive and speaking dynamically today. We affirm the intrinsic authority and trustworthiness of the Bible, given by God as the ultimate rule for Christian faith and conduct. We affirm the contribution of the historic church to biblical interpretation, the positive fruit of contemporary biblical scholarship, and the insights provided from the worldwide church. We affirm the role of scripture, reason and tradition in biblical interpretation, with scripture being the supreme authority by which the church should judge itself, its thinking and its traditions. We affirm the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

Study Team
Team Leader: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The purpose of the Study Team is to facilitate the development of All Souls as a learning community – to understand the basis for Christian theology, and then put it into practice. Using scripture, Church tradition, and reason, the study team will promote knowledge and Christian practice in the following areas:

1. Christian life in the city
2. Theology
3. Church history
4. The All Souls values of justice, beauty, prayer, study, work, worship, and community
5. Christian family life
6. Christian mission

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Justice
The Justice Value: We affirm that the God of Israel is righteous and just and is in the process even now of putting the world to rights. We affirm justice as a matter of healing, reconciliation and wholeness. We affirm that Christ is reconciling all things to himself through the cross. We affirm the proclamation of the gospel as the means by which sinners hear and respond to the good news of God’s reconciliation in Christ and respond in faith, therefore becoming members of God’s covenant family. We affirm the critical importance of listening to our city, paying attention to her wounds and aspirations. We affirm the works of justice that emerge from this patient listening: hospitality towards the stranger, care for the earth, service with the poor, and working for the transformation of the structures of our city so that our city might better reflect God’s shalom.

Justice Team
Team Leader: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Justice Team seeks to educate and inform the church about issues of injustice, to lead the church in a process of observation, exploration, and discernment about how All Souls should collectively strive for justice on a long-term basis, to educate and enable our members to pursue justice individually in their own lives, to represent the value in discussions regarding church decisions/actions, and to advocate for church resources that adequately support the value.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prayer
The Prayer Value: We affirm our dependence upon the God revealed to us in the scriptures and affirm that we are powerless to live fully the life we were created to live without His guidance and empowering Spirit. We affirm that we, as individuals and as a congregation, are in a covenant relationship with a God Who Speaks. We affirm that God gives all the gifts of the Spirit to His people today. We affirm the practices of individual and congregational discernment. We affirm healing prayer for the sick and receiving and testing prophetic words. We affirm the ancient practice of the daily office, praying morning and evening for our city.

Prayer Team
Team Leader: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Prayer Team seeks to create an environment at All Souls Church where the presence of God is desired, valued and expected. This team also seeks to help those in our church to walk deeper in the intimate relationship that He has invited us into as his redeemed children, to mature in the gifts He has given us to build up the body and to seek His will as we seek to impact the city to which He has called us.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Children’s Ministry Team
Team Leader: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We provide nursery care for newborns through age 4 during the entire service. There are Sunday School classes for children ages 5 through 5th grade.  They begin worship with the congregation. They are then dismissed at the Passing of the Peace and return for Communion. The curriculum stresses understanding of Jesus as our redeemer by learning how the Old Testament points to the New Testament.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Youth Ministry Team
Team Leader: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We want youth to know true friendship with God and others, which God makes possible in the Christian life. Our times together attempt a fun and substantive approach to learning how to most fully experience that life. We strive to know God better as we spend time in prayer and studying the Bible, the story of God‚s self-revelation in the world. Additionally, we pursue our relationship with God during our times together outside of Bible study. We serve God by serving other in our community.

As youth spend time with leaders and with others in our group, we also hope they find true friendships with other people. True friendships are those in which youth are edified, encouraged, and loved. We want youth to enjoy discovering how God has uniquely created each of them in Jesus Christ, and we hope they walk with each other and discover that freedom together.