About Us
We believe there is one God who exists in three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This Triune God, all three Persons, has always existed since before there was time. God was not created, but is the Creator of all things, even time itself.
We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, inerrant in its original languages, and that every word of it is useful for us today. The Bible does not contain every truth in the world, but contains all that we need to know to be in the right relationship with God, love others, and follow Jesus in this world. The Bible is living and active, able to judge the intentions of our hearts. We believe that studying the Bible is an interactive supernatural experience because the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts and explains spiritual wisdom to us through God’s Word.
God the Father shows us grace, mercy, and everlasting lovingkindness, guides us in the right paths, provides us with everything we need, protects us from harm, and disciplines us with love and compassion.
God created Adam and Eve “very good” in His image and likeness. He commanded them to rule over His creation as His stewards. When they chose to disobey God, sin entered God’s good world and the image of God in humanity was marred. Instead of worshiping God and ruling over His creation in His stead, they worshiped and served creation itself.
Because the wages of sin is death, the fall of humanity brought eternal death to the entire human race. Every human being is born into a state of original sin, from which we can only be saved by God’s grace through faith in the redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross.
God the Son is God made flesh – both fully God and fully human. God the Son has always existed with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and was incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth in first century Israel. Jesus came to earth to show us who God is and to usher in the kingdom of God. His healings, casting out demons, teaching, miracles, and ministry showed the world who God is and what the kingdom of God is like – a place with no suffering, disease, pain, inequality, injustice, or evil. His atoning sacrifice of His own life made it possible for us to enter the kingdom of God through faith in Him. His first coming planted the seed of the kingdom of God which is now growing in the world through the Church. His second coming will bring the final consummated kingdom of God.
We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, not by works.
The Bible teaches us that all human beings are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. Not only do we commit individual sins, but we also have a sinful human nature that we inherited from Adam and Eve through the fall. Yet by His grace, God made a way for all who believe to be justified before Him by the sacrifice of Jesus, through Christ’s righteousness on our behalf. As the only perfect human being who ever lived, Jesus, by the blood of His sacrifice, makes atonement for our sins as a substitution for us.
When we accept His sacrifice on our behalf, we take on His righteousness.
Good works only come after salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. We don’t do good works to gain God’s approval or love; we do them in response to the love He has already freely given. When we accept Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, we are reborn of the Holy Spirit and made new creations in Christ Jesus. Then, for the rest of our lives here on earth, the Spirit grows us more and more into the image of His Son. It is only through His Spirit living and working in us that we can do good works and reflect His image to the world.
God the Spirit has always existed with God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit has been active in the world from the beginning. In the old covenant, the Holy Spirit came upon people at different times and empowered them to do God’s will in a variety of ways, including prophecy, miracles, strength, wisdom, and craftsmanship. In the new covenant, the Holy Spirit not only works in the world, but also lives in the hearts of all believers, comforting us, teaching us, growing spiritual fruit in us, and making us more like Jesus every day.
We believe the church is the body of Christ, God’s hands and feet in the world. As people who have been reconciled to God, the church is called to a ministry of reconciliation, to reconcile the world to God. So in one sense, the church is a community which exists for the benefit of those outside their community, but we are also called to live together in community as God’s family, loving one another, and building one another up in the faith.
It is in community that we learn to love others the way Jesus loves us, even those we find difficult to love. It is in community that we learn to forgive, repent, and reconcile; rebuke, correct, and encourage; and share, serve, and humbly put others’ needs before our own. Without community, we could never experience iron sharpening or learn from the wisdom and experience of another believer.
