What We Believe

We believe that God has inspired the words of the sixty-six books included in the Old and New Testaments. These writings alone constitute the Word of God. They are without error in their original writings, totally truthful, utterly authoritative, complete in revealing God’s will for salvation and sufficient for all that God requires of us to believe and to do.

We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Men and women are equal in their value as image bearers of God and enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus. Both are called to distinct but significant engagement in family and church life and both are empowered by the Spirit to fulfill those callings.

We believe that Adam fell into sin through the temptation of Satan, fracturing the image of God and forfeiting fellowship with God personally and for all his descendants. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted by sin in every aspect of their person and condemned to death and eternity separated from God, apart from His gracious intervention.

We believe that from all eternity God determined to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe, language, people and nation in his grace and mercy. In love, God commands and implores all people to repent of sin and believe in the finished work of Jesus, whom the Father ordained to be their Redeemer, to the praise of His glorious grace.

We believe that Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh, fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified on a Roman cross, rose on the third day and ascended into heaven as our representative and substitute. On the cross he canceled the debt of sin and reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Jesus was vindicated by the Father, he broke the power of death, defeated Satan, and brought everlasting life to all his people. By his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else.

We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, his incarnation, sinless perfection, substitutionary atonement, triumphant resurrection and present rule over all things. The gospel is absolute foolishness to the world, but for us, it’s the wisdom of God and the power of God to those who are being saved.

We believe the Church is God's new covenant people, the bride of Christ, which is manifest in local churches of which Jesus is the only Head. She is distinguished by her gospel message, her global mission, her sacred ordinances, and her discipline for holiness. Above all, she is marked by her love for God, her members' love for one another and her love for the world Christ came to redeem.

We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully absorbed the debt of all those who would believe in him. By his perfect obedience, he satisfied the righteous demands of God on our behalf. By his sacrificial death, he bore in our place, the punishment our sin deserves. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, his perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ for their acceptance with God, and their sin is remembered no more.

We believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself as the sacred ordinances of the church. Baptism is connected with entrance into the new covenant community. The Lord’s Supper, representing the body and blood of Jesus, is connected to our ongoing covenant renewal. They are God's reminder to us of His love and grace, and a public display of our submission to Christ.

We believe that salvation is applied to God’s people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Spirit remains presently and actively at work by convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment; by powerfully and mysteriously regenerating spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith; and by baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus in the hearts of men, empowers them for the work of ministry, and seals them for the day of redemption.

We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit, enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of Christ's power and authority. We are not saved by meeting the demand for good works, but saving grace produces the indispensable fruit of good works. Living as light in a dark world, believers neither withdraw from the world nor immerse ourselves in the world. Rather, we are to do good to the city in which we live, to demonstrate to the world the joy and freedom that is found by living in glad submission to the rule and reign of King Jesus.

We believe in the glorious, physical return of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the resurrection of both the believer and the unbeliever - the believer to eternal life and salvation in the presence of God, and the unbeliever to eternal judgement and separations from God. Upon Jesus’ return, the church will be presented faultless before God, by Christ. His people will be in immediate and undiluted awe and wonder of his holiness, freed once and for all from the tyranny of sin, to delight fully and freely in the glory and grace of their God.