At 8115 Williamson Road in Roanoke, St. Philip Lutheran Church is known for a simple public identity: Love, Feed, Serve. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation has gathered for more than 50 years and puts its “Live Like That” vision into worship, faith formation, food support, local service, pet-therapy ministry, and mission in Malawi.
A Grace-Centered Lutheran Identity
St. Philip describes its life as connection: to the God of Grace, who gives love unconditionally; to Jesus Christ, through whom people are called to live good news; and to the Holy Spirit, who is present always. God is described as living relationally with all people indiscriminately and openly. The church seeks to embody that grace in genuine, honest, and faithful ways, beginning with connection to God and continuing through connection to one another. Its membership in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America extends that circle of grace.
The congregation has been active for more than half a century, and its many ministries are ways of responding joyfully to God's call to live faith in daily experience. The work is not limited to gathering on Sunday. It includes bringing good news, caring for people who are poor, announcing release to captives, recovering sight to the blind, and helping the oppressed go free, as St. Philip understands those words from Luke 4:18.
- Salvation is by God's grace alone, not by anything people do.
- Salvation is through faith alone, with sins forgiven for Christ's sake, who died to redeem people.
- The Bible is the only norm of doctrine and life.
The congregation includes people from varied backgrounds who seek to be disciples of Christ, responding in thanksgiving to God's love for all creation and people. Rev. David C. Derrick has served as pastor since 2000. He is proud of the church community and excited about the work God is doing there. Ministry Associate Donita Moore brings experience as an educator and musician to the ministry team.
What Live Like That Means
Live Like That means allowing every moment of life to be rooted in the assurance that God has each person in Christ Jesus. This is gift, undeserved and unmerited, rather than a reward for achievement. The response is to let the sacrifice of Christ become a pattern of goodness, mercy, forgiveness, and justice in daily life. Failure does not erase the hope carried by that grace.
St. Philip also insists that this calling cannot remain only personal. Jesus calls disciples into mission, and his followers proclaim good news, care for the sick, teach about God's kingdom, and leave an old way of life for a new one. Faith becomes action wherever a person is called to serve.
For the church, community encourages, questions, holds people accountable, and turns conviction into movement. Members seek to honor questions about faith and life, speak truth in love, forgive, and recognize signs of God's love in one another. They do not limit the difference they hope Christ makes to the congregation itself; they extend that hope to the neighborhood and all its expressions. This shared practice is how Love, Feed, Serve becomes an identity rather than a slogan.
Sunday at 9:30: Word, Sacrament, and Blended Music
Sunday worship begins at 9:30 a.m. at St. Philip Lutheran Church, 8115 Williamson Road in Roanoke. The congregation is livestreamed on Facebook, and recordings of Sunday worship are available afterward. The service is intentionally rooted in the historic Lutheran pattern while using language and music that speak in the present.
A Gathered Conversation Rooted in the Word
St. Philip explains that worship is liturgical because it is the work of the people. The worship leader and congregation respond to one another in giving thanks to God. The primary pieces center on hearing the Word, both written and preached, and receiving Christ in Holy Communion. The flow gathers people as God's people, nourishes them with Word and Sacrament, and sends them out for ministry in the world. Even when the sequence is not immediately obvious, the congregation seeks a theological reason for what happens in worship.
Music That Remembers and Speaks Now
The music ministry follows the tradition of Martin Luther and places importance on the Word in sung liturgy and hymns. Its aim is to remember God's love and grace freely given through the risen Christ. To do that, St. Philip uses many musical genres, instruments, and musicians, blending traditional and contemporary resources. The resulting sound can include voices and organs, guitars, and drums, all used to profess faith.
Children's Sunday Faith Formation
Children's faith formation takes place on Sunday mornings, with additional resources offered through a variety of media. A children's resource table is located just outside the sanctuary doors.
Elijah's Backpack on Friday Afternoons
Elijah's Backpack is a free community ministry sponsored by St. Philip in Roanoke, Virginia, and carried out through a local elementary school. Its regular rhythm is simple: each Friday afternoon, elementary school children receive a backpack filled with healthy food and snacks. The goal is to help families eat more healthy meals and snacks during the day.
Packs may include:
- Cereal, breakfast bars, oatmeal, and juice
- Tuna kits, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter crackers
- Soup, applesauce, fruit cups, ravioli, and vegetables
- Milk and other nutritious foods
The ministry responds to a daily challenge faced by many local families while keeping food support close to children and schools.
Grace.Period and the St. Mark's Pantry Partnership
Grace.Period is a collaborative free-food ministry in Vinton centered on sharing grace while responding to hunger. St. Philip's Endowment provided seed money, and Pastor David Derrick joined other pastors in considering what Lutheran congregations could do together. The work brought together congregations from the Roanoke Valley and the Virginia Synod, described as the statewide Lutheran body. It found a home at the former St. Timothy Lutheran Church property after St. Timothy concluded its life as a worshipping community. Free food was distributed to anyone who could use something to eat, expressing St. Philip's commitment to love, feed, and serve.
The Virginia Synod asked retired Wheatland Lutheran pastor Chuck Miller to help organize and imagine a feeding ministry at the Vinton property. His experience in feeding ministry, together with the congregations' shared vision, shaped Grace.Period around food distribution, collaboration, and grace.
The Grocery Bag Ministry supplies items for St. Mark's Lutheran Food Pantry, where there is a constant need for food and hygiene products. The partnership seeks food of all kinds, including perishables such as eggs, along with paper products. Its guiding concern is to support people who may not have enough to eat while treating every participant with dignity and care.
The wider ministry identity also takes shape through Feast at Philips, food drives for the food pantry, American Red Cross blood drives, meeting space for local organizations, and an annual Day of Service that joins a crew with a local organization for projects supporting its ministry. These are practical expressions of the same purpose St. Philip names in its mission: sharing the grace it has received.
Faith Formation Across Generations
Faith formation at St. Philip is described as a journey of relationship, discovery, and learning. Adults can join Bible study, book study, interactive devotions, and faith sharing. Youth meet for regular monthly gatherings and retreats. These opportunities are designed to equip people to grow as disciples and carry faith into daily life.
Congregational life is theology in practice. Parents and families look for ways to share faith with another generation. Youth have a safe place to have fun and be a little different. Music becomes a public profession of faith through voices, organs, guitars, and drums. At other times, community gathers simply for food and conversation. St. Philip says practice does not make people perfect, but it helps equip the community to love, feed, and serve in truth and action.
Witnessing Paws and Animal-Assisted Service
St. Philip also supports pet therapy through Witnessing Paws. The church serves as an evaluation location for Pet Therapy Teams through Pet Partners, Inc. Pet Partners provides the national framework for training, registration, licensing, and outreach coordination. St. Philip's local collaboration with THERAPETS shares evaluator resources to support renewals for existing teams and the creation of new teams.
These teams volunteer in hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes, hospice settings, schools, and at facility events. Their work brings animals into human settings for animal-assisted interaction. St. Philip connects this ministry to compassion, healing, and wholeness, emphasizing the way animals can offer unconditional affection to people.
A Long-Term Partnership in Malawi
For more than 10 years, St. Philip has partnered with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Malawi through an accompaniment model of ministry. Its Global Missions Team has supported the Mponela sister parish with funds for a feeding center, a borehole well, and flooding disaster relief. Members of St. Philip have also traveled to Malawi and worked alongside people there despite a language barrier.
The team educates the St. Philip community about the needs of Malawi and connects those needs with peace, justice, and care for creation. Malawi is described as a landlocked country in southeast Africa shaped by recurring drought and flooding. The partnership is both practical and educational, sharing resources while building a wider understanding of the world beyond Roanoke.
Sharing God's Gifts
Sharing God's gifts is another expression of St. Philip's calling. The church describes stewardship as a thankful response to God's abundance and generosity as something that flows without an expected return. Regular giving is one way to participate, alongside offering time and talents to a ministry. One-time and recurring gifts are available through secure online giving.
St. Philip finds its stewardship teaching in the gifts given for the common good and in passages that call people to rich works, generous lives, and readiness to share. Those gifts support the church's wider mission of loving, feeding, and serving. St. Philip holds worship, formation, feeding, service, mission, and generosity not as separate activities but as expressions of one calling: to receive grace, tell the truth in love, feed people, serve neighbors, and send people out into God's world.