Beliefs

There is one God. He is Holy and the Creator of all that is. The Godhead consists of three distinct persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, and has existed in eternity past with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus took on an additional nature when He was born in Bethlehem. Jesus now possesses two natures forever as God in human form. He was virgin born and therefore was not a son of Adam and as a result did not inherit Adam’s sin. The doctrine of the virgin birth is essential to the Gospel as is His divinity. He was crucified on a Roman cross and bodily rose from the grave on the third day. He ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. All authority in Heaven and on earth belongs to Him. He will return to earth and reign for a thousand years as King from the throne of his father David. His death on the cross is the substitutionary atonement for the sin of all who believe.

Every believer is supernaturally in dwelt with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit provides wisdom, discernment, and power for Christian living and illumines the heart and mind to the truths of Holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit also empowers believers with various spiritual gifts. These gifts vary among believers but God’s purpose for them is that they be used for the building up of the church.

The Bible is divine rather than human in origin. It is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It explains the truth of the sinful condition of man and the way of salvation found only in Jesus the Messiah. When it speaks to topics of history, biology, anthropology, law, morality and ethics, or numerous other disciplines of study, it speaks the truth. It is inerrant in its original writings. The Holy Spirit perfectly guided the human authors to write precisely what He wanted without error or omission. It is to be diligently studied, believed, publicly proclaimed, and taught by the Church.

Man came into existence by the supernatural, creative acts of God. God did not merely create “people.” He specifically created mankind consisting of two genders (male and female) and each of these two distinct genders reflects the image of God. Adam sinned against God and, as a result of his disobedience, death and sin have plagued the earth and mankind ever since. All of humanity has inherited Adam’s sin nature and all have individually chosen to sin as a result of our fallen nature.

Our sin has separated us from God. Apart from the forgiveness offered through Jesus, our destiny is eternal punishment in Hell. Jesus provides the only way of escape from the wrath of God. Salvation is found in no other. His death on the cross paid the penalty of our sin. Christ satisfied the debt we owed for our sin, and He is our righteousness before a Holy God. When a person places their faith in Christ, they are a new creation and every past, present, and future sin of that new believer is forever removed.

We affirm that true saving faith should always be followed by good works, a pursuit of holy living, and is expressed in ministry and mission to the world. As James 2:17 states, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

God’s first institution was marriage. It is the foundation of the family and civilization as well as a picture to the world of God’s relationship to His people. God’s intention for marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

Baptism is the sign of God’s saving grace, the forgiveness of sins, and new life in Jesus Christ. Our church practices infant baptism as the covenant sign for a child born to Christian parents. The child’s parents, along with the rest of the church, commit to raise the child to live according to the way of Christ.

We do, however, recognize that there are some in our fellowship whose conviction favors “believer’s baptism.” Some parents may choose to wait until their child is able to make a personal confession of faith in Jesus and then allow them to be baptized, perhaps after the conclusion of confirmation. In the spirit of recognizing differences of opinion on the matter and a desire for unity in the body, the church is willing to accommodate this practice.

Finally, some adults will come to faith in Jesus later in life and rightly desire to make a public profession of faith and be baptized. The church practices and celebrates this as well.

In all of these practices, what we all agree on is that baptism itself does not save a person but rather it is a sign and a symbol of God’s saving grace. We are saved by grace apart from works through faith in our Savior Jesus and His death on the cross that paid for our sins.

There are two sacraments instituted by our Lord Jesus as means of grace for His Church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper, also known as communion. They are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible and the means by which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.