leadership Team
KEN ROSS | BISHOP
Bishop Ken lives in Colorado Springs and serves Christ Our Hope as well as our sister parishes in the Diocese of the Rocky Mountains by praying for, pastoring, and caring for the clergy and overseeing the local church. When Bishop Ken is not traveling to one of the churches in his care, he's likely out enjoying the beauty of Colorado.
DAVE ABELS | LEAD PASTOR, PRIEST
Dave is the planting and lead pastor of Christ Our Hope. Dave and his wife Amy were both raised locally. We are thankful for the opportunity to have lived in many different places, but are humbled and eager to join with the work of renewal God is doing in Sioux Falls.
Kevin Clouse | Associate Pastor
Kevin is the associate pastor of Christ Our Hope. He hails from Michigan and is pleasantly surprised to find himself in South Dakota and becoming Anglican. Kevin has served as a lead pastor and many various associate roles ministering in multiethnic contexts. Most recently, he was based in Hong Kong training pastors all across Asia.
Our beliefs
Christ Our Hope is a new church in downtown Sioux Falls. We stand in the strength of the Great Tradition of the Church. We hope in the promises of God for the future. And we live awake to the present, seeking God's redemption of this world.
We stand in the historic tradition of the Church without reservation, relying on the Bible as the Word of God and Jesus as the full expression of God. We are confident that Jesus is both restoring us and giving us the joy of restoring the world with him. Our beliefs can be summed up in the Creeds of the Church historic:
Our Affiliations
Anglicanism
Ancient Faith
We believe that the practices of the church ought to be rooted and grounded in God’s Word expressed in the Church throughout history. There are many faithful ways of being a Christian in today’s world. We want to walk the same way as Christians who have gone before us. There are specific practices found in Scripture that create and shape us into mature disciples who make disciples. Some of these elements include:
A call to worship where we bless God’s name (Ps. 100:4)
Prayer for God to open our lips to praise him (Ps. 51:15)
Public Prayer and Confession of Sin ( Acts 2:42)
Worshiping God in Song (Col. 3:16)
The reading and proclaiming of God’s Word (Acts 2:42)
The celebration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:26)
The sending forth of the people (Mtt. 28:19)
We believe the same things that the Church has always believed and seek to walk in the same Scriptural rhythms that have been embodied by Christians throughout history.
Global Relationship
We truly are a Global Church. With 80 million Anglicans worshiping around the world, we join with a great multitude as we together proclaim the same truths and mysteries. The shape and the heart of Christianity has shifted massively in the last fifty years. Most Anglicans (and Christians) are now in the Southern Hemisphere rather than Europe and North America. The average Christian today is a 23year old black African mother. It has pleased God to continue to use the church in South America, Africa, and Asia to carry the torch by commissioning a new work in America. Through our mutual relationship to Jesus, our prayers are joined with those of every tribe and tongue and nation, brothers and sisters walking together.
In God’s wisdom, Christ Our Hope’s primary global connection is Rwanda, in East Africa. For more information on this incredible story, keep scrolling or click on the Rwanda tab.
Local Mission
Walking in the historic tradition and in relationship with the global church empowers us for life together locally. The only way the world ever changes is at the local level. Therefore, as Anglicans, we are vigilant and mindful to pursue justice and redemption coming to this world – not just wait for the world to come. Jesus says in Mark 1.15: “The time has come; the kingdom of God has come near…” The kingdom of God is breaking into this world in the person of Jesus and that means being participants and joining God in the renewal of all things.
Rwanda
Where does Rwanda fit in? Three ways.
Refuge.
As Anglicans, we love the visible unity of the church. Surely, the church ought to seek to embody this unity as Jesus prayed in John 17: I pray also for those who will believe in me ... that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. So what happens when the leaders of the church persecute their own faithful members? We need an advocate.
As more pressure comes to bear on faithful Christianity, the Church in America has needed an advocate for those suffering for the gospel here, in the States. At a time when no one else would help, the Rwandan Church stood with their brothers and sisters here, in America, at great cost to themselves, sparking a renewal movement of the church in America.
During a season of great vulnerability for the church, Rwanda has been a refuge for the Anglican Church in America.
Power.
Though American Christianity has continued its slide away from the historic, orthodox faith, the global church is finding renewal and life in the good news of Jesus...such is true of Rwanda. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.
Rwanda has known deep sorrows of their own, having walked through a national genocide in 1994. With such pain and so few resources, the church there has not had the luxury of the gospel not working... of masking their pain with anything. So God is faithful to show up for those who seek him. The church in Rwanda and our relationship with them continues to demonstrate this reality: God is strong. He is powerful. He changes things. He is able to bring real reconciliation between former enemies.
The Apostle Paul says this: I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
In humility, we are recipients of God's redeeming work in Rwanda and it informs our community and life here.
Friendship.
Though we have no formal connection with Rwanda, our relational connection runs long and deep. So it is in friendship. We have prayed together, lost together, and seen great victories for God ... together. As Anglicans, we are woven into the global church. In God's providence, this is grounded for us in the concrete reality of known brothers and sisters in Rwanda. Our relationship with them makes us ever mindful of the plight of our brothers and sisters around the world as well as reminding us that we are known and prayed for as we seek to join God in his renewal of Sioux Falls.
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Christ Our Hope Anglican Church
1310 S Main Ave
Sioux Falls, SD 57105