Doctrine
Six Essential Beliefs
God
We believe that God exists eternally in three persons; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that these three are one God. As God He is righteous and just but also merciful and kind. He is all powerful, all loving, always present and all wise. We believe that He is the absolute and sole creator of the universe and that He reigns with providential care over His universe even today. We believe that God, by His sovereign choice and out of love for men, sent Jesus the Christ into the world to save sinners. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became a man without ceasing to be God; He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and was born of a virgin and He lived a sinless life.
Jesus Christ
We believe that Jesus voluntarily offered Himself as a substitu¬tionary sacrifice, that he was crucified, died as a penalty for our sins, was buried and was raised from the dead bodily on the third day. Later he ascended to the Father’s right hand where He is head of the church and intercedes for believers. Because we believe that by the death of Jesus, through His shed blood, He made a perfect recompense for sin, we believe that the salvation He offers, with its forgiveness of sins and its hope of eternal life, is entirely apart from good works, baptism, church membership or man’s effort, and is of pure grace.
Holy Spirit
We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, that He also is God, and possesses all the divine attributes. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment and He brings new life to those who have trusted in Jesus. He indwells all believers, baptizes and seals them, bestows spiritual gifts upon them, and fills them in response to confession of sin and repentance.
The Bible
One of the foundational truths that we believe as a church is that the Bible is the Word of God. We believe that it was inspired by God so that it was without error when God originally gave it and preserved by God so that it is a divinely authoritative standard for every age and every life.
Forgiveness
We believe that each person must personally and specifically repent of their sin and by faith make a decision to trust in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of their sin. Such a commitment to Jesus will demonstrate itself in a changed life.
Spiritual Gifts
We believe that spiritual gifts are given by God the Holy Spirit for the building up the body of Christ (Eph.4:16ff, 1 Cor.12:7) however we reject the idea that any particular gift will be given to all or even that we should expect everyone to have any particular gift. (1 Cor.12:11-12, 27-30). Instead, we believe that God gifts people according to how He wills and how He sees a need in the body. (1 Cor.12:11) We believe that the marks of maturity and godliness are the fruit of the Spirit exercised with godliness (Gal.5:16-26) and we reject the idea that the gift of tongues, or any other particular gift, is evidence of spiritual maturity or godliness. (1 Cor.3:1-3, 12:11)