“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- Howard Thurman
What is Eastside all about?
Practicing Resurrection.
While that phrase came to us through a thought provoking poem by Wendell Berry, we think it’s pretty appropriate for who we are.
We try to practice resurrection individually, corporately (or as a congregation), and universally (or throughout the larger community and world). From our hearts to the world - we are a community who believes that which has died can enter into new life - that with God, all things and all people can be transformed.
We embrace a creative, inclusive, justice focused expression of the historic, Christian faith emerging from our United Methodist roots. Our understanding and practice of Christianity may be different than what you’re used to in today’s American “Christianity” because we are trying to root ourselves in the embodiment of the movement Jesus catalyzed 2000 years ago.
We believe our lives can be transformed through individual and collective practices of authentic worship, growth through community in Christian faith, serving others, and working for justice.
At the heart of the generative writings we find manifest in Holy Scripture, we encounter the person and work of Jesus Christ. At Eastside Church we believe that God's mission in Jesus Christ was and is to redeem and restore all of creation. Three primary ways we encounter Jesus’ redemptive practices were his faithful worship of God, his intimate communion with humanity, and his revolutionary ability to learn, teach and embody the truth of God for the world.
Eastside is a progressive, intentional expression of historic, orthodox Christianity on Atlanta's east side. We strive to be the Church with and for our community through embodying a visible, tangible, practice oriented Christianity. We work to embody the love of God through our intentional practice of this startling and unsettling surprise we call resurrection. We want to be a conduit in the world through which God’s transforming, restoring, liberating, and renewing power can flow into all of creation. We believe our connection with the renovation of the world begins with resurrection in the human heart. Therefore, at Eastside Church we hope to inspire, equip and enable folks to experience and practice this resurrection in their daily lives through powerful, transformative encounters with the living God.