Dear Friend,
Welcome! Thank you for taking the time to search us out on the Web.
We are named after Stephen, the Deacon and first martyr. Saint Stephen’s remembers that The Book of Acts records Stephen’s love for God and how he showed that love in service to others and in sharing the truth. Here at Saint Stephen’s we have been living into that call for over 100 years. Starting in downtown Wilmington, and moving to our present location in 1929, Saint Stephen’s has been a place of welcome to all who have come through its doors. As Christians, we take seriously the call to hospitality, and we remember the call to “show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Saint Stephen’s is a congregation of the Delaware-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That is a mouthful, but what it means is that we are connected globally and historically to Lutherans and Christians around the world and through the centuries.
What does Lutheran mean? It means that we are followers of the teachings of the great reformer Martin Luther (1483 – 1546). We believe that God created us, but that we are estranged from God and that through the gift of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we are made one with God again through the power of the Holy Spirit. We come to know of God and his love for us and all creation through God’s Word, the Bible. And we can participate in that love through God’s gift to us of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
As Lutherans, we share a great deal with the entire Church of Christ in every time and place:
We confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the Gospel as the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, through whom everything was made and through whose life, death, and resurrection God fashions a new creation. The proclamation of God’s message to us as both Law and Gospel is the Word of God, revealing judgment and mercy through word and deed, beginning with the Word in creation, continuing in the history of Israel, and centering in all its fullness in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the written Word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world. This congregation accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life. This congregation accepts the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this congregation. (From our Constitution)
And there is that which makes us distinctively Lutheran:
This congregation accepts the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as a true witness to the Gospel, acknowledging as one with it in faith and doctrine all churches that likewise accept the teachings of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.
This congregation accepts the other confessional writings in the Book of Concord, namely, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise, the Small Catechism, the Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord, as further valid interpretations of the faith of the Church