We hold to the historic Christian faith as taught in the Bible and summarized in the Statement of Faith below.
For a pdf version of the statement, click HERE.
The Tri-une God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible. Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.
Bible
We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the only verbally inspired and sufficient Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.
Creation and Corruption of Humanity
We believe that all human beings, male and female, are created by God in the image of God for the glory of God. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus, and complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. We believe that God creates each person with an immutable biological sex - male or female - that reflects His image and generous intention for creation.
We believe that all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can restore us to himself.
The Person and Work of Christ
We believe that the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed His heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended victorious into heaven.
The Good News of Salvation
Salvation is wholly dependent upon the work of God’s free grace. The gospel is the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to reconcile sinners to God. We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he took the punishment that our sins deserve, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who repent of their sin and trust in Christ for their acceptance with God. By his victorious resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan, and brought everlasting life to all his people. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it.
The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
We believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and is present with and in all true believers. He regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God’s family. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service. Only such as are born of the Holy Spirit and receive Jesus Christ become children of God and heirs of eternal life.
God’s New People
The church is the body of Christ. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head.
God’s Final Victory
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness.
*The following doctrinal statements were used to compile this statement of faith: EFCA Statement of Faith, The Gospel Coalition – Confessional Statement, Evangelical Presbyterian Churches – The Essentials, Various Ancient and Historic Creeds