We are an Episcopal church in the Diocese of Texas, part of The Episcopal Church of the United States, and the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Episcopalians are people of the Book. Everything we do is rooted in Scripture, shaped by reason, and formed by 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Our central text is the Book of Common Prayer — a rich, living collection of liturgies, prayers, and rhythms for a life devoted to Jesus Christ. Most of it comes directly from Scripture, woven together into a pattern of faithfulness that has formed Christians across centuries and cultures.
Whether you come from a Roman Catholic background, a nondenominational church, or no church at all, you'll find a point of connection here. We are informal and high church at the same time — which sounds like a contradiction until you experience it. The liturgy is ancient and the welcome is genuine. The prayers are carefully ordered and the people are in jeans. We take God seriously. We try not to take ourselves too seriously.
That's not a modest calling. It means we exist not just for the people inside these walls but for the whole city. It means worship, proclamation, and the pursuit of justice, peace, and love are not separate programs — they're one mission, lived out together.
We call this being Informal, High Church: a community where the work is your prayer, the neighbor is the mission, and showing up is the practice.
Everything begins here. Prayer, worship, and sacrament aren't the warm-up for the real work — they are the real work. We practice the rhythms of devotion not because we have it all together but because we know we need them. A devoted community is one that keeps returning to God, in good seasons and hard ones, together.
Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment. He named two, and said they were inseparable. We take that seriously. Being neighborly means more than being friendly — it means crossing the lines Waco tends to draw, showing up in neighborhoods that aren't ours, and building relationships that the gospel makes possible and the world says shouldn't work. Our neighbor is not just the person in the pew next to us. Our neighbor is Waco.
Reconciliation is slow work. Community is costly. Faith has hard seasons. Faithful doesn't mean perfect — it means we don't quit. It means we come back after the hard conversation, the long absence, the season of doubt. It means the community you find here will still be here, still showing up, long after the excitement of something new has worn off.
Our core values were developed through a prayerful process with our leadership team as part of our ongoing commitment to clarity about who we are and what we're called to do. They aren't marketing language. They're the questions we ask when we're discerning a new initiative, evaluating a partnership, or trying to figure out whether we're still on mission. If you want to know whether Holy Spirit is the right community for you, these three values are the most honest answer we can give.