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Our beliefs

We believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. While different men wrote according to their own styles and personalities, they were supernaturally moved along by the Holy Spirit to record God’s very words, inerrant (without error) in the original autographs (Psalm 119:97-104; Psalm 119:160; Matthew 5:18; John 5:46-47; John 10:35; 2 Timothy 3:16-17), infallible (incapable of error) in their instruction (2 Peter 1:19-21), and enduring forever (Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:23-25). We believe that Scripture is immutable (unchanging), and is sufficient to instruct all cultures in all places at all times without deficit, error or irrelevancy. 

We believe Scripture is the final authority and the standard for faith and practice (Matthew 4:4; Psalm 119). We believe that God’s Word, through Scripture, supersedes any earthly law that is contrary to the Holy Scriptures.

We believe in the one living and true God (John 17:3), eternally existing in perfect unity as three equally and fully divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19-20; 2 Corinthians 13:14). Each member of the Godhead, while executing distinct but complementary roles in redemptive history, has precisely the same nature, attributes, and being, and is equally worthy of the same glory and honor and obedience (John 1:1-4; Acts 5:3-4).

We believe in the person of God the Father, an infinite, eternal, personal Spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, power and love; that He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of men; that He hears and answers prayer; and that He saves from sin and death all those who come to Him through Jesus Christ. (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalms 90:2; Psalms 102:27; John 3:16 and 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17; Titus 1:3).He exercises sovereign headship over all creation, providence, and redemption (Ps 103:19; Rom 11:36), and He has decreed for His own glory all things that come to pass (Ephesians 1:11).

We believe that Jesus Christ, the eternal begotten son of the Father, took on human nature (John 1:1, 14, 18, 3:16). Conceived through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, we believe in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles and teachings, his substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, and perpetual intercession for His people. (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2; Matthew 1:23; Mark 16:19; Luke 1:34-35; John 1:1-2, 8:58 and 11:25; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:8; 1 John 1:2; Revelation 1:8). He is now Head of His Body the Church, the only Savior and Mediator between God and man, and will visibly return to earth in power and glory to consummate His redemptive mission (1 Timothy 3:16).

We believe that the Holy Spirit, in all that He does, glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ during this age. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). He draws the unredeemed to repentance and faith, and at salvation imparts new spiritual life to the believer (Titus 3:5), bringing that person into union with Christ and the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 6:15). The Holy Spirit sanctifies (Romans 15:16), seals (Ephesians 1:13), fills (Ephesians 5:18), guides (Romans 8:9-17), instructs (John 16:13), comforts (Acts 9:31), equips (Ephesians 6:17-18), empowers (Acts 1:8), permanently indwells at salvation (John 14:17; 1 Corinthians 3:16), and bestows spiritual gifts to the believer for Christ-like living and service. (Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12:4-13, 19; Galatians 5:25). We believe in the present-day ministry of the Holy Spirit in regard to the exercise of all biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit according to the instructions given to us in 1 Corinthians Chapters 12 through 14.

We believe that God created mankind—both male and female—in His own image and likeness, free of sin, to glorify Himself and enjoy His fellowship (Genesis 2). Man freely chose to disobey God, bringing sin, death, and condemnation to all mankind. All human beings, therefore, are totally depraved by nature and by choice (Psalm 52:5; Ephesians 2:1-3). Alienated from God without defense or excuse, and subject to God’s righteous wrath, all of mankind is in desperate need of the Savior (Genesis 3:1-6; Romans 3:10-19; Romans 1:18, 32).

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, as the substitutionary atonement in our place, and that salvation is found in none other than Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Acts 4:12). Before Creation, God chose those who would be saved and granted this unearned grace solely based on His sovereign good pleasure (Ephesians 1:4-11).  We also believe that all those that call upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13). Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was the sole and complete payment for sins, fully satisfying God’s righteous wrath, for each person that turns from sin in repentance and places their faith in Christ alone by grace alone (Hebrews 10:1-18). At salvation each person is made a new creation by the Holy Spirit, declared righteous before God, and secured as an adopted child of God forever (2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 8:15). Genuine faith continues in obedience and love for Jesus Christ with a life eager to glorify God and persevere to the end (Romans 8:37-39; 1 Peter 1:3-5; Philippians 1:6; John 10:27-30; 1 John 2:19).

It is God’s kindness, forbearance, and patience that lead that person to repentance (Romans 2:4). All glory for the salvation and security of every believer belongs to God alone (Romans 3:21-31; Ephesians 1:7-9; Ephesians 2:8-9, Jude 1:24-25). We believe that everyone who is born again by the Spirit through Jesus Christ is eternally assured of salvation from the moment of conversion. This assurance relies on God’s decisive grace rather than on the works of the Christian. Obedience, good works, and fruit-bearing do not earn or retain the believer’s salvation but indicate the reality of the person’s love of Christ and profession of faith (John 14:21; 15:8, 16; James 2:17-18).

Eternal security in salvation relies on the Lord’s guarantee of each believer’s adoption as His son or daughter (Galatians 4:4-7), His seal of the believer by the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 1:13-14), and the conviction that God gives the Holy Spirit to each believer as a down payment toward future bliss in heaven (2 Corinthians 1:21-22). A person who professes genuine faith in Christ immediately becomes His possession (Luke 23:42-43; Acts 2:40-41; Acts 16:30-34), and nothing can snatch that person out of His hands (John 10:27-29). Having been bought with the price of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion as complete payment for sin, Christians are not their own. They are Christ’s possession (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). This assurance is absolutely certain, reserved in heaven, protected by God’s unlimited power (1 Peter 1:4-5).

We believe that upon placing one’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, the believer is made part of the Body of Christ, the one universal Church, of which Jesus Christ is the Head (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). The Scriptures command believers to gather locally in order to devote themselves to worship, prayer, teaching of the Word, fellowship, the ordinances of baptism and communion, service to the local body through the development and use of talents and spiritual gifts, and outreach to the world to make disciples (Acts 2:42-46; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Matthew 28:18-20). Wherever God’s people meet regularly in obedience to this command, there is the local expression of the Church under the watchful care of a plurality of elders. A church’s members are to work together in love and unity, intent on the ultimate purpose of glorifying Christ (Ephesians 4:16).

Baptism and communion are the two ordinances required in the church. We believe that Christian baptism by immersion in water is a public identification with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Acts 2:41; 8:34-38). Although baptism is not required for salvation, it is commanded of all believers and is for believers only (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:38, 41). Scripture shows that a person was baptized after personally receiving forgiveness of sin through accepting Jesus Christ. The waters of baptism are a symbol of our death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life that happens when we become new creations in Christ (Colossians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:1-4). Communion is the commemoration by believers of Christ’s death, and a reminder—through the bread and the juice—of the Savior’s broken body and shed blood. Communion is to be a time of confession of our sin and should be preceded by careful self- examination according to Acts 4:13; Romans 6:3-6; 1 Corinthians 11:23-29.

We believe that when God created mankind, He created them male and female. Essential to their human flourishing are the roles, expressions and physical traits that God designed in their original creation. God then instituted a complementarian, monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of all human society. (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6; John 4:16-18; Romans 1:18-32; I Corinthians 5:11, 6:9-11, 6:18-20, 7:1-3 and 7:8-9; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:3-7; 1 Timothy 1:9-11)

We believe in a personal devil called Satan who, along with all his evil angels, called demons, is destined to spend eternity in hell, and who now seeks to deceive the believers and defeat the work of God, but who can be resisted by believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, protected by God, and interceded for by Jesus our Lord.

We believe in and eagerly await the magnificent, divisible, personal, return of the Lord Jesus Christ (Revelation 20:4) after which He will establish the Millennial Kingdom. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the saved and the lost. The lost will be raised to judgment and experience eternal wrath in hell (John 5:28-29). The saved will be raised to eternal joy in the new heaven and new earth in the manifested presence of God (Revelation 21-22).