Our Mission

Glide Memorial Church believes and practices a Christianity where all people and all beliefs are welcomed. Grounded in imperatives of liberation; unconditional love; self, systemic and world transformation Glide Memorial Church nurtures the spiritual needs of our congregation and community. Through acts of recovery, service, justice, connection, transformation and celebration we exist as a sacred spiritual community to many and to all. We live in a world where all who seek to express their connection to spirit and community, can do so in a thriving ecosystem of love.

The “work of our hands” is the spiritual driving force for Glide Memorial Church. By intentionally working together and with our partners, we actively work to dismantle all forms of structural racism and all forms of internalized and externalized oppression. This is our work and our calling as a radically inclusive, open and affirming, extravagantly welcoming, unconditionally loving church, called to the many forefronts and frontlines of social activism.

Our Vision

Glide Memorial Church serves as the Soul and Heart of San Francisco, continually challenging and guiding the city’s moral compass. We envision a city and a world that embodies the sacred of every person and affirms all dimensions of religion, race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, culture, age, immigration status and physical and mental ability. Glide Memorial Church stands with all who seek spiritual, physical and mental health recovery — as we are a healing, faith, and justice ministry and movement.

Our Values

Celebration. We sing with one another. We dance with one another. Celebration is a collective tool of liberation. As we come together in celebration, we encounter and are changed by one another. We embrace and extend our unconditional love to our community and the wider world. We celebrate new life. We celebrate self-revelation. We celebrate recovery. We celebrate transformation.

Faith. We believe in God and all that is good and right and holy.

Prayer. We are a praying church. We pray together and separately. We solicit prayers and amplify prayers. Prayer in the hands and mouths of believers is always the appropriate response to the joys and concerns of liberation.

Radically Inclusive/Storytelling. We believe that everyone has a sacred story. We believe coming into voice is essential to self-definitions of freedom. We create sanctuary and safe space for transparent, vulnerable and honest stories. We believe in a God who welcomes and celebrates all living creatures, diverse faith traditions, those who identify as non-believers, and those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. We accept that God can be named or left unnamed. We accept the Jesus of liberation, recovery, and discovery. We believe that everybody is an instrument of God’s love and grace.

Welcome. We are radically inclusive. We welcome everyone. We value our differences. We respect everyone. We are an ever more welcoming home. We believe in the power of a spirit-filled community to reach out and welcome all people in our neighborhood of the Tenderloin and beyond. We practice radical inclusion in how we worship, how we enact social justice, how we offer sanctuary and healing, and how we learn together as a community. We embody a lived sense of the beloved community. We are committed to partnering, learning and growing with every person who has ever called Glide Memorial Church home. We are a safe house for all those seeking sanctuary. We stand with people and communities to dismantle structural racism and all forms of oppression. All are welcome here!

Love and hope. We invite everyone to experience personal, communal, and transformative encounters with a God that is love. We believe all can experience the abundant love of God’s grace without judgment, fear and constraints. We stand with all people. We are committed to loving and healing the earth. We welcome and embrace all who are housed and unhoused, food secure and food insecure, those in all forms of recovery, those seeking healing and those who are seeking wholeness. We believe all belong in a peace and justice filled world.

Service. We are a healing community nurturing the spiritual needs of our congregation and community, transforming the world through organized acts of unconditional love.

Justice. We believe social activism is the church responding to suffering in the world. We believe challenging and bold witness dismantles structural inequity, and highlights the struggles of the marginalized.

Truth Telling: We believe in learning and leading from the teachings of diverse sacred texts, sharing and participating in different traditions. We celebrate peoples’ stories and voices as living testimony and a reflection of grace. We understand the impact of structural racism, all systems of oppression, and the wide range of intersectional harms that our communities endure. We speak, call, interpret, and deploy the bible as love to all sites of religious trauma.