STATEMENT OF FAITH

We believe the Bible, comprised of the Old and New Testaments, is the inspired, infallible, and authoritative Word of God. Through Scripture, God reveals who He is, His heart toward us, the story of His redemption, and how He invites us to live with Him (Matthew 5:18; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

We believe the Bible is God-breathed and our final authority for faith and life. God worked through the unique personalities and writing styles of its human authors, guiding them by the Holy Spirit to faithfully communicate what He intended (2 Peter 1:21).

We believe in one God, the Creator of all things, who has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct Persons, yet one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Colossians 1:16; 2 Corinthians 13:14).

We believe God is eternal, sovereign, all-knowing, all-powerful, present everywhere, and unchanging. He is holy and righteous, loving, gracious, merciful, and good. God is love, and everything He does flows from the perfection of who He is (Psalm 90:2; Psalm 139:1–13; 1 John 4:8; James 1:17).

We believe this God has made Himself known to us as a good and loving Father. Through Christ, we are not merely forgiven; we are adopted into His family and invited to know Him as Father (Romans 8:14–17; Galatians 4:4–7). Jesus came to reveal the Father and show us what He is truly like (John 1:18; John 14:9).

As a good Father, God knows us, loves us, provides for us, guides us, teaches us, encourages us, and lovingly corrects and disciplines us as He forms us into maturity (Matthew 6:31–32; Psalm 32:8; Hebrews 12:5–11). His fathering is rooted in His love and His desire for our good.

God invites each of us to know His heart, receive His love, trust His leadership, and learn to walk with Him as His sons and daughters. He continues this fathering and forming work in us throughout our lives.

We believe Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. In Jesus, God came near to us. He entered our world, lived among us, experienced life as we do, and revealed what the Father is truly like (John 1:14; John 1:18; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 4:15).

We believe Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a fully human yet sinless life. He knows our humanity, understands our weakness, and meets us with grace and truth (Matthew 1:23; Hebrews 4:15–16).

We believe Jesus loves us and willingly gave His life for us. On the cross, He bore our sin and accomplished what we could never accomplish for ourselves, opening the way for us to be forgiven, redeemed, reconciled to God, and brought home to the Father (Isaiah 53:5–6; Romans 5:8–9; 1 Peter 2:24).

We believe Jesus physically rose from the dead, defeating sin and death and giving us the hope of new and everlasting life (Matthew 28:6; 1 Peter 1:3). He ascended to Heaven and is now with the Father, where He continues to intercede for us (Acts 1:9–10; Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25).

We believe Jesus is alive, present, and personal. He knows us, calls us to follow Him, and invites us into an ongoing life with Him.

We believe the Holy Spirit is fully God and lives within everyone who belongs to Christ. He is God’s presence within us, bringing new life, assuring us that we belong to God, teaching, guiding, comforting, convicting, empowering, and transforming us as we learn to walk with Him (John 14:16–17; Romans 8:9–16).

We believe the Holy Spirit enables us not merely to know truths about God, but to know Him personally and experience His love. Through the Spirit, we can increasingly grasp the immeasurable love of Christ and experience the fullness of life with God (Ephesians 3:16–19).

We believe God speaks to His people and invites us into a conversational relationship with Him. Through the Holy Spirit, we learn to recognize His voice and follow His leading, always consistent with God’s character and His revealed Word (John 10:27; John 16:13; Acts 13:2).

We believe the Holy Spirit is active and at work today, giving gifts according to His will and empowering God’s people for His purposes. We trust Him to move, speak, lead, heal, transform, and accomplish far more than we could ask or imagine (1 Corinthians 12:4–11; Ephesians 3:20).

We believe in the reality of angels, created by God to serve Him and accomplish His purposes (Psalm 148:2; Hebrews 1:14).

We also believe in the reality of Satan and demons. Satan rebelled against God and is an enemy of God and humanity. He and the forces of evil oppose God’s Kingdom and His purposes in our lives, yet through the cross Jesus has triumphed over the powers of darkness, and their final defeat is certain (Colossians 2:15; Revelation 20:10).

As followers of Jesus, we believe we are called to actively resist the enemy rather than live in fear or remain passive toward spiritual opposition. Jesus gives His followers authority in His name, and Scripture calls us to remain alert, stand firm in faith, resist the devil, pray, and put on the full armor of God (Luke 10:17–20; James 4:7; Ephesians 6:10–18).

We engage spiritual warfare from a place of Christ’s victory rather than fear. Our confidence is in Jesus, the authority of His name, the truth of His Word, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

We believe each of us was intentionally created by God in His image. We were created for relationship with Him, to know Him, walk with Him, and live the life for which He made us. Every person therefore carries God-given dignity, value, and purpose (Genesis 1:26–27).

Sin entered the human story and brought brokenness into our relationship with God, ourselves, one another, and the world. Each of us has participated in that brokenness and needs the redemption and life God offers us in Christ (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:1–5).

But brokenness and sin do not have the final word. Through Jesus, our old self was crucified with Him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6). In Christ, we are new creations; the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We may still struggle with sin, old patterns, wounds, desires, and ways of thinking as God heals, sanctifies, and matures us. But through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, genuine change is possible. God is restoring and forming us into the people He created us to be (Ephesians 4:22–24).

Our identity is not ultimately defined by our sin, failures, wounds, or past. We are people deeply loved by God, invited into redemption, restoration, and new life with Him.

We believe salvation is God’s gift of grace, received through faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross (Ephesians 2:8–9). Jesus died in our place and bore our sins, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves (Romans 5:8–9; 1 Peter 2:24).

Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We do not earn God’s acceptance through our goodness, obedience, or accomplishments. We receive what Jesus has already accomplished for us.

We believe those who receive Christ belong to Him and are secure in His love, kept by God’s power and sealed by His Spirit (John 10:27–30; Romans 8:38–39; Ephesians 1:13–14).

But the gospel does not end with our salvation. Salvation is the beginning of a new life with God. The same grace that saves us continues to heal, restore, transform, and mature us (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 1:6).

Each of us is a work in progress. As we walk with God, He restores what has been broken, heals what has been wounded, and forms us into greater maturity and Christlikeness. We increasingly become the people He created us to be and learn to live into the purpose and calling He has given us (Ephesians 2:10). A changed life and good works are not the price of salvation, but the fruit of a life being transformed by God (James 2).

We believe the heart matters deeply to God. Scripture speaks of the heart as central to our desires, beliefs, affections, choices, and relationship with God. We are called to seek Him, love Him, serve Him, and obey Him with all our heart (Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37).

We believe that through the New Covenant, God gives us a new heart and a new spirit, replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh and writing His truth upon our hearts (Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:26; Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 10:16). In Christ, we are born again by the Spirit and made new (John 3:3–7; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

We believe God knows and searches our hearts and continues to heal, restore, guard, and form them as we walk with Him (1 Chronicles 28:9; Psalm 139:23–24; Proverbs 4:23). Through the Holy Spirit, He transforms our deepest desires, motives, beliefs, and affections so that we increasingly desire what He desires.

We believe relationship with God is a matter of the heart. We are invited to know His heart, give Him our whole heart, and increasingly live from the new heart and new life He has given us.

We believe the Church is the Body of Christ, the family of all who belong to Jesus through faith. God did not design us to follow Him alone. He gives us one another as an essential part of life with Him (1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Ephesians 2:19–22).

We believe some of God’s greatest gifts to us are the relationships we form with other followers of Jesus: people who know us, walk with us, encourage us, challenge us, pray with us, carry burdens with us, and remind us of what is true when we lose our way. In these relationships we experience fellowship, belonging, encouragement, accountability, and the kind of friendship in which iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17; Galatians 6:2; Hebrews 10:24–25; James 5:16).

We believe following Jesus is meant to be lived in connection with others. We need trusted friends and fellow travelers who will stand with us, speak truth into our lives, celebrate with us, grieve with us, and help us keep moving toward God. Through these relationships, God often strengthens, encourages, heals, and forms us (Ecclesiastes 4:9–12; Romans 12:10–15).

We believe in believer’s baptism as a public expression of faith in and identification with Jesus, and in the Lord’s Supper as a shared remembrance and proclamation of what Christ has done for us (Matthew 28:19–20; Acts 2:41–42; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26).

Together, we are called to love and serve one another and to carry the good news of Jesus into the world through both our words and the way we live (John 13:34–35; Matthew 28:19–20; Acts 1:8).

We believe Jesus Christ will return and God will bring His work of redemption and restoration to completion (Titus 2:13; Revelation 21:1–5).

We believe the choices each of us makes in this life matter and shape the direction of our lives. God invites each of us to turn toward Him, receive the life He offers in Christ, and learn to walk with Him (John 3:16–17; 2 Peter 3:9). Wherever we have been and whatever has shaped our story, through Christ we are offered forgiveness, redemption, transformation, and new life.

We believe we have an incredible future to look forward to with God: real, embodied, abundant life in His renewed creation. Scripture describes the restoration of all things, when God makes everything new and dwells with His people (Matthew 19:28; Romans 8:19–23; Revelation 21:1–5). All that sin and death have broken will finally be made right. There will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain, and we will enjoy the goodness of God’s restored creation with Him forever (Revelation 21:3–5; Revelation 22:3–5).

This is the great hope toward which God’s story is moving: Jesus returning, evil and death defeated, resurrection, restoration, all things made new, and life with God forever.