We believe God has a plan for your life and desires an intimate relationship with you! He wants to bring healing to your life and Christ-centered church community where you can belong, serve, and grow in your faith. We believe God’s plan to change the world is through the local church, because the local church is the only institution in society totally committed to helping people orient their entire lives around Jesus and the teachings of the Bible.
An important part of growing as a disciple of Jesus is learning the core beliefs of the Christian faith. This is particularly important in our society today, which increasingly believes that truth lies in our subjective feelings and experiences rather than in God’s unchanging Word.
Out of loyalty to Christ and the gospel, we have come to a number of convictions concerning the clear teaching of the Bible in our Statement of Faith. At the same time, these convictions are consistent with those held by Bible-believing Christians for the last 2,000 years. We also echo what has often been said throughout church history: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity.”
We believe that there is one true, holy God, eternally existing and expressing Himself in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – each of whom possesses equally all the attributes of deity and characteristics of personality. In the beginning God created out of nothing the world and everything in it, and from that beginning He has been relentlessly desiring and pursuing a personal, intimate, and eternal relationship with us, His children. (Genesis 1; Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 3:16,17)
We believe, even though God created humans to live in relationship with Him, that sin entered the world through the first man and woman, and our relationship with God was broken and distorted. That initial disobedience by humans resulted in a severing of our relationship with God, and there was and is nothing we can do on our own to reestablish that union with our Father … But we also believe that God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay; rather He promised to restore this broken world and bring His family back together. (Genesis 3; Romans 1-3)
We believe that our longings to be reunited with our Father found their fulfillment in Jesus, born of a virgin, mysteriously God in the flesh. Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted and set captives free. He lived a perfect life, proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom. He was rejected by many, crucified, buried, and rose again. His death and resurrection bring hope to all creation. Through Jesus we have been forgiven, and through Jesus God reconciles us to himself. Through Jesus God puts His family back together Jesus is the only way for this to happen, the only mediator between God and humans. For all who believe and receive His sacrifice He gives the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth through a communal life of worship and a missional expression of our faith. (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Romans 5:1-11; Hebrews 4:14-16, 7:24-25)
The third person of God (Father & Son being the two others) is the Holy Spirit. We believe the Holy Spirit lives within every believer in Jesus and that the Spirit is our abiding helper, teacher, and guide. We believe in the filling or the empowering of the Holy Spirit for ministry today. We believe in the present ministry of the Spirit and in the exercise of all of the biblical gifts of the Spirit. (John 14 & 16; Acts 2; Romans 8; I Cor. 12 - 14)
We believe the Bible to be the voices of many who have come before us, inspired entirely by God to continue to speak to us today.; We believe the Bible, as it was originally written, is entirely accurate, complete and reliable; God calls us to immerse ourselves in this authoritative Word and to continue to faithfully live out that story today as we are led by the Spirit. (2 Timothy 3:16,17; 2 Peter 1:19-21)
We believe there is one true church, universal, comprised of all those who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and await the return of Christ. We believe the church is called to engage the culture and to put the resurrected Christ who lives in and through us on display to a broken and hurting world. We believe that God works through the church to bring His family back together through Jesus Christ. (Matthew 5:13-16; Matthew 16:18; Acts 1-12; Ephesians 4:1-16)