The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) is an Anglican diocese built on five key values: Kingdom, Spirit, Formation, Mission, Sacrament. Learn more in Values.

C4SO began as a church planting movement in 2009 in the Anglican Mission in the Americas. The Anglican Church in North America’s Provincial Council approved our formation as a diocese in June 2013, and our common life is ordered by our C4SO Canons [updated in 2021]. Now, we unite churches and leaders located primarily in California, Texas, the Midwest, the South, and the East, organized by Regional Deaneries. In these diverse contexts, we seek to develop ministry from the mission field back—contextualizing our tradition for a given ministry setting. We are also involved in planting churches in collaboration with other dioceses and denominations throughout the United States.

Our churches offer a diversity of worship experiences—from very traditional vestments, music and liturgy to a much more relaxed and contemporary vibe. Some of us worship in traditional church buildings and others find homes in storefronts, schools, civic centers, theaters, and more. Such Spirit-led variety is celebrated among us, never criticized. Our only measuring sticks are faithfulness to Jesus and fruitfulness aligned to the kingdom he preached.

As a diocese, we seek to establish outposts of Jesus’ person, word and power in the midst of a struggling humanity. We want to create a family of churches that evermore perfectly lives into God’s intention for the Church by finding our core meaning as ambassadors or embassies of the rule and reign of God. We also want to foment “the journey inward and the journey outward” (Elizabeth O’Connor); the come-ness of followership and transformation and the sent-ness of mission.

As a diocese in the Anglican tradition, C4SO is founded upon the way of life commended to us by Jesus, the example of the Apostle Paul, and the missional heritage of Thomas Cranmer, leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury.

C4SO seeks to follow and extend the following missional path:

• Jesus said: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21).“God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in [my] way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you.” (Mt. 28, The Message)

• Paul did this with the missional/contextual heart we seek to emulate: “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” (1 Cor. 9, The Message)

• Cranmer, architect of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), was clear about his intent: In keeping with Jesus and Paul, he sought to disciple his nation. The Preface to the 1549 Prayer Book asserts that ministry should be done according to the various exigency of times and occasions. Cranmer was concerned that his flock didn’t understand Latin, that they couldn’t profit from it; that at best, they heard with theyr eares onely; and their hartes, spirite, and minde, have not been edified thereby.Cranmer was a deeply spiritual leader and a seriously intellectual follower of Jesus who, knowing he was alive at a key moment in history, was a man of his times, trying to disciple his nation to an orthodox heart-religion of following Jesus. He did so by articulating a clear and distinctive theology expressed in the 39 Articles of Confession and The Homilies. He then set to prayer the theology of the Anglican Reformation, giving the church the invaluable gift of the BCP. It edified the hearts, minds and spirits of a nation, stirring them to both love and gratitude that found expression in good works. This gave rise to what we now think of as Anglican history, liturgical and sacramental worship, beliefs and practice.