What We Believe

Christ is the Head and final authority of the Church.  His Word, the Bible, is the binding and final authority in all matters of faith and practice.  We believe the Bible was inspired by God and inerrant and infallible in the original autographs and is preserved by God in such a way as to be authoritative and totally reliable today.  We also believe that it is the truth without any mixture of error in all realms of reality: historically, scientifically, doctrinally, and prophetically.

 

To that end we hold these specific doctrines:

1.  A belief in one God, infinite spirit, creator, and sustainer of all things, who exists eternally in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  These three are on in essence but distinct in person and function.

 

2. The Father is the first person of the Trinity and the source of all that God is and does.  From Him the Son is eternally generated and from Them the Spirit eternally proceeds.  He is the designer of creation, the speaker of revelation, the author of redemption, and the sovereign of history.

 

3. The Lord Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity.  Eternally begotten from the Father, He is God.  He was conceived by the Virgin Mary through a miracle of the Holy Spirit.  He lives forever as perfect god and perfect man; two distinct natures inseparably united in one person.

 

4. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, proceeding from the Father and so and equal in diety.  He is the giver of all life, active in the creating and ordering of the universe; He is the agent of inspiration and the new birth; He restrains sin and Satan; and He indwells and sanctifies all believers.

 

5. All things were created by God; Angels were created as minister agents, though some, under the leadership of Satan, fell from their sinless state to become agents of evil.  The universe was created in six historical days and continuously sustained by God; thus it both reflects His glory and reveals His truth.  Human beings were directly created, not evolved, in the very image of God.  As reasoning moral agents, they are responsible under God for understanding and governing themselves and the world.

 

6. Adam, as the first man, willfully disobeyed God, bringing sin and death into the world.  As a result, all persons are sinners from conception, which is evidenced in their willful acts of sin; and they are therefore subject to eternal punishment, under the condemnation of a Holy God.

 

7. Jesus Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice by the appointment of the Father.  He fulfilled the demands of God by His obedient and sinless life, died on the cross in full substitution and payment for the sins of all, was buried, and on the third day He arose physically and bodily from the dead.  He ascended into heaven where he now intercedes for all believers.

 

8. Each person is saved only through the work of Jesus Christ; through repentance of sin and by faith alone in Him as Savior.  The believer is declared righteous, born again by the Holy Spirit, turned from sin, and assured of heaven.

 

9. The Holy Spirit indwells in all who are born again, conforming them to the likeness of Jesus Christ, the Word of God inn separation from sin.

 

10. The church is the local assembly of baptized believers, under the discipline of the Word of God and the lordship of Christ, organized to carry out the commission to evangelize, to teach, to administer the ordinances of believer’s baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  Its officers are the pastors and deacons.  It is self-governing.  It functions through the ministry of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to each believer.