The Bible
The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is inspired by the Holy Spirit and is the final and absolute authority for belief and conduct. The Bible is still relevant today.
Triune God
There is one God, the creator, who exists eternally in unity as three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triune God is loving, holy, infinite, just, and worthy of all worship. God manifests Himself to man in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God the Father
The Father accomplishes his plan of salvation through both redemption and judgment. All things will be subject to him, and his kingdom will have no end.
Jesus Christ
We believe Jesus Christ to be the one and only Saviour of mankind. We believe Jesus Christ to be eternally God and to possess all the attributes of Deity. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was virgin born, that He was God incarnate, and that the purposes of the incarnation were to reveal God, to redeem men, and to rule over God’s kingdom. After he died for our sin, God raised him from the dead, and he is now at the right hand of the Father, waiting for the time of receiving His church at the Rapture, and returning seven years later to earth to rule and reign as King for 1,000 years.
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. The Holy Spirit draws people to repentance and new life in Jesus Christ. Through the Spirit’s indwelling, the Father and the Son are present to all believers, making them children of God.
On the Day of Pentecost, Jesus poured out the promised Holy Spirit on the church. Jesus continues to baptize in the Holy Spirit those who are believers. This empowers them to continue his work of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. This experience is available for everyone. The sign of speaking in tongues indicates that believers have been baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Sin and Salvation
We believe all men were born with an inherited sin nature received from our common ancestor, Adam. Salvation is available to all people by the loving, redemptive act of Christ’s death on the cross. Christ, who had no sin, became sin for us offering himself and shedding his blood on the cross so that in him we might become right with God. The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ provide the way of salvation for those who, turn from their sin and confess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
The New Testament Church
Jesus Christ is the head of the church. All who are united with Christ are joined by the Spirit to his body. Each local church is an expression of the universal church whose role is to participate in the mission of God to restore all things.
Central to the church is the shared experience of the transforming presence of God. The church responds with worship, prayer, proclamation, discipleship, and fellowship, including the practices of water baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism by immersion symbolizes the believer’s identification with Christ in his death and resurrection. The Lord’s Supper symbolizes Christ’s body and blood, and our communion as believers. Shared together, it proclaims his death in anticipation of his return.
The Spirit gives all gifts to the church to minister to others in love for the purpose of bearing witness to Christ and for the building up of the church. The Spirit also empowers leaders, both female and male, to equip the church to fulfill its mission and purposes.