Statement of Faith
1 We believe in one God, almighty, eternal, without beginning and without end. God is triune, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
2 We believe that in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, all that is both visible and invisible.
3 We believe that at the peak of Creation, when the work was almost complete, God created man, a unique being set apart from the rest of creation and made in the image of God. Man was given dominion over the Earth and set into the garden that God had created to work and steward it. 4 We believe that God then created woman as a helper uniquely fit for man. The definition for Christian marriage comes from this first God-ordained relationship: one man with one woman bound together by a holy covenant before God for life.
The man and the woman were blessed by God and instructed to be fruitful and multiply and to expand across the earth. 5 We believe that because mankind was created special, in God’s image, that the taking of any innocent human life is a horribly grievous sin. 6 We believe that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To this end we love and worship our Father in Heaven, we love our fellow man created in his image, and we love and steward the Creation that he gave to us.
7 We believe that while the first man and the first woman were in the garden, that they were tempted and sinned, disobeying God. At that moment sin entered into the world and fractured God’s perfect creation, corrupting mankind for all generations to come. They were expelled from the garden and forced to live a mortal life in hardship and toil. It was in that moment though, that God first began to reveal his redemptive plan.
Because mankind’s relationship with God was damaged, 8 We believe that God gave us his holy words, captured in written form by people that he selected to speak on his behalf. 9 We believe that this Holy Word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit is perfect and inerrant in its original form.
We see through the Scriptures that God set apart a people group to call his own, and that through them he began to teach mankind about himself and gave us the Law to show us how to live set apart from sin in holiness.
10 We believe that at the perfect time in history, that God the Son (Jesus) came to earth and through a miracle of the Holy Spirit took on the form of a man in the womb of a virgin called Mary. 11 We believe that the Son of God, now being both fully God and fully man lived a perfect and sinless life, teaching his disciples how to love God and to love each other perfectly. At the close of his time on this earth, in full obedience to God the Father, the Son offered up his life on the cross to be the final sacrifice of payment for our sins, completed the requirements of God’s Law, and paved the way for us to once again be in a right-standing relationship with the Father. Jesus died and was buried, and 12 We believe that on the third day he rose again to conquer the power that sin and death held over mankind.
13 We believe that the Son, as he was ascending to Heaven to be seated once again next to the Father, commissioned his disciples to go into all the world, to preach the Gospel, and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is for this reason that 14 We believe that once a person repents of their sin, confesses Jesus as the Christ, believes in his resurrection, and places their faith in Him, that they should be baptized publicly to symbolize their transition from death to eternal life for all to see. 15 We believe that salvation comes through Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.
16 We obey the instruction of Jesus to observe a time of remembrance, that we call communion, where we break bread and drink of the cup as Jesus taught his disciples to do, remembering the body that was broken for us and his blood that was spilled as payment for our sins.
17 We believe as taught in the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit was sent to the Church after Jesus’s ascension to be our comforter, to empower us to complete the Great Commission, and to remind us of all that was taught by him in the Scriptures. 18 We believe that all believers in Jesus were given gifts and roles to fulfill by the Holy Spirit for the edification and growth of the Church.
19 We believe that Jesus is coming back and will call his church to him and that he will judge both the living and the dead. Those believers who have placed their faith in Christ will be rewarded with eternal life and those who rejected the Son will be rewarded with eternal punishment. We look forward to a new Heaven and Earth, a new Jerusalem, and our being gathered to our Lord whom we will be with, in the glory of his kingdom forevermore.