What We Believe

1. The 66 books of the Holy Bible are the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. They are our supreme authority in all matters of doctrine and practice. This, our statement of faith, is always subject to the Scriptures.¹See Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
2. God created the entire universe ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), and man from the dust of the earth to be a special creature bearing His image.
3. In the unity of the Deity there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are co-equal and co-eternal, while relating to each other, and revealing themselves to us, as three distinct persons, with distinct activities and accomplishments.
4. We believe in the virgin birth, sinless life, miraculous works, and substitutionary atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate (in the flesh). We believe that He was buried and three days later arose from the dead in essentially the same physical body in which He died. In its resurrection, His body was glorified. This glorious resurrection is a sign of the defeat of death by the victorious Christ.
5. We confess our own and every human being’s desperate need for salvation. Every person outside of Christ’s redemption is utterly guilty and corrupt before a Holy God. The new birth (regeneration) is absolutely essential for salvation.
6. Salvation is by God’s loving, free grace in Christ. It is received by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone. Good works give evidence of true faith, but cannot merit God’s saving grace.
7. The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, is given to and indwells each true Christian as the “earnest” of his or her inheritance.
8. On a day known to no man, the Lord Jesus Christ will return bodily to earth in glory. This event will be manifest to all mankind.
9. There will be a bodily resurrection and final judgment by God of every person who has ever lived, which will result in everlasting bliss for His elect and everlasting torment in the lake of fire for the impenitent, those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
10. The Church Universal, or Body of Christ, consists of all those united to Jesus Christ their only Head by His Spirit and by faith. Such are also united to one another. This organic unity is neither established nor obstructed by human organization, and it is not destroyed by disagreement among church members on doctrines secondary to these essentials.
11. Congregations or associations of congregations abandoning all or some of these essentials, but which formerly held to them, are churches tending to apostasy. A cult is typically a religious organization the tenets of which are substitutes for all or some of these essentials, and it confessionally opposes them. Cults typically view salvation (however they define salvation) as inseparably connected to cult membership.
12. There is a personal, malevolent being called Satan. We acknowledge the existence of demons, and of God’s holy angels.