What We Believe
There will always be peripheral doctrines upon which biblically-rooted and committed Christ followers disagree, and we welcome dialogue on many issues related to Christian doctrine. However, we recognize the importance of having a framework around which we unite as a community of believers, and we hold the following essentials to be at the core of who we are and what we believe. We confess the following statements of faith.
We believe in one God who exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is infinite, which does not always make sense to our finite understanding. His character is multi-dimensional but no facet of His character diminishes another. In other words, His grace and wrath, mercy and justice, love and jealousy all work together for good.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, worked miracles and gave us an example to follow. Fully God and fully man, He died on a cross to pay the penalty for sin that separated us from God, and He rose from the dead to reconcile us to our Creator, freeing us to have new life in Him. Now, He sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.
The Holy Spirit is given to every follower of Christ to comfort, convict and teach us about a life lived for God. The Spirit helps us grow in Christ-likeness by producing the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) in our lives and equips us with spiritual gifts to empower us to meet the needs of God’s people and minister to a hurting world. We are instructed to diligently seek the gifts, but they must be exercised in an orderly way in the context of love.
Comprised of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, authored over thousands of years by dozens of authors, the Bible tells one seamless story about a passionate God on a relentless pursuit to redeem His creation. The Bible is the authoritative and inspired Word of God, and it is trustworthy and reliable for revealing who God is and how we are to live our lives.
We were created in the image of God to have communion with Him and represent Him on earth. Through a willful act of disobedience, we were separated from Him. The Father sent Jesus to redeem us through an act of atonement which culminated with Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. This gave us the opportunity to trade our sin for His righteousness through faith. Jesus’ sacrifice is the only means for our salvation and reconciliation with the Father.
The Church is the Body of Christ and Jesus is the head of the Body. The Church is not a building or an event, but the community of individuals who have put their trust in Jesus. The purpose of the Church is to glorify God, make disciples, make Jesus known to a lost world, and meet the needs of those in our community and world. We celebrate water baptism as the first step of obedience for new followers of Christ, in which they identify with Christ’s death and resurrection, making a public declaration of their faith. We also celebrate communion as an ongoing remembrance of the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross.