Summary of Core Beliefs:

1) God is bigger, better, and closer than we can imagine.
2) The Bible is God’s perfect guidebook for living and God’s revelation of His ways and Himself..
3) Jesus is God, providing the way of salvation and showing us how to live the God-life.
4) Nothing in creation “just happened.” God made it all. He created humans as cathedrals, built to house God’s Holy Presence.
5) When sin entered the world through our disobedience, God already had a plan for bringing us back into the life we were created for with Him.
6) Grace and faith in Christ is the entrance to a healthy relationship with God, which results in regeneration that will continue from this life until our resurrection.
7) The church is to serve people like Jesus served people, bringing them back into contact with Jesus Christ until He returns.


A More Complete Statement

We praise God for his great salvation and rejoice in the fellowship he has given us with himself and with each other. We are deeply stirred by what God is doing in our day, moved to penitence by our failures and challenged by the unfinished task of reconciliation. We believe the Gospel is God's good news for the whole world, and we are determined by his grace to obey Christ's commission to proclaim it to all mankind and to make disciples of every nation. We desire, therefore, to affirm our faith and our resolve, and to make public our covenant.

1. THE NATURE OF GOD

We affirm our belief in the one-eternal God, Creator and Lord of the world, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who governs all things according to the purpose of his will. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, loving, gracious, merciful, righteous and just. He is the only One who has always existed and always will. He is the only glorious One, the only One worthy of worship. He has been calling out from the world a people for himself, and sending his people back into the world to be his servants and his witnesses, for the extension of his kingdom, the building up of Christ's body, and the glory of his name. We confess with shame that we have often denied our calling and failed in our mission, by becoming conformed to the world or by withdrawing from it. Yet we rejoice that even when borne by earthen vessels the gospel is still a precious treasure. To the task of making that treasure known in the power of the Holy Spirit we desire to dedicate ourselves anew.

(Isa. 40:28; Matt. 28:19; Eph. 1:11; Acts 15:14; John 17:6, 18; Eph 4:12; 1 Cor. 5:10; Rom. 12:2; II Cor. 4:7)

2. THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF THE BIBLE

We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. We also affirm the power of God's word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. The message of the Bible is addressed to all men and women. God's revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God's people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God.

(II Tim. 3:16; II Pet. 1:21; John 10:35; Isa. 55:11; 1 Cor. 1:21; Rom. 1:16, Matt. 5:17,18; Jude 3; Eph. 1:17,18; 3:10,18)

3. THE UNIQUENESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF CHRIST

We affirm that there is only one Savior and only one gospel, although there is a wide diversity of evangelistic approaches. We recognize that everyone has some knowledge of God through his general revelation in nature. But we deny that this limited revelation alone can save, for people suppress the truth by their unrighteousness. We also reject as derogatory to Christ and the gospel every kind of syncretism and belief, which implies that Christ speaks equally through all religions and ideologies. Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and people. There is no other name by which we must be saved. All men and women are perishing because of sin, but God loves everyone, not wishing that any should perish but that all should repent. Yet those who reject Christ repudiate the joy of salvation and condemn themselves to eternal separation from God. To proclaim Jesus as "the Savior of the world" is not to affirm that all people are either automatically or ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer salvation in Christ. Rather it is to proclaim God's love for a world of sinners and to invite everyone to respond to him as Savior and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith. Jesus Christ has been exalted above every other name; we long for the day when every knee shall bow to him and every tongue shall confess him Lord.

(Gal. 1:6-9;Rom. 1:18-32; I Tim. 2:5,6; Acts 4:12; John 3:16-19; II Pet. 3:9; II Thess. 1:7-9;John 4:42; Matt. 11:28; Eph. 1:20,21; Phil. 2:9-11)

4. THE NATURE OF CREATION

We affirm the belief that God created the heavens, the earth, and all life therein. God created man and woman in a state of sinless perfection with the special distinction as His image bearers on the earth. Man was created in the image of God, but as a result of sin is lost and powerless to save himself. 

(Gen. 1; Jhn. 1:1-3; Rom. 6:23)

5. THE NATURE OF SIN AND SALVATION

We affirm the belief that our first parents sinned against God and that everyone since is a sinner by nature and choice. Sin has totally affected all of creation including marring the human image and likeness so that all of our being is stained by sin (e.g. reasoning, desires, and emotions). Because all people have sinned and separated themselves from the Holy God, He is obligated to save no one from the just deserved punishments of hell. We also believe that God in His unparalleled love and mercy does not desire that any would die eternally, but that all would seek Him and eventually find Him. The only hope for man is to believe on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, fully God, fully man. Through life-transforming faith in Christ’s life, death and resurrection, mankind is redeemed. We further affirm that in God’s plan of reconciliation, Christ, through his death, has made full, undeserved payment for the sins of those who receive him. To those who have received Christ, he has given the right to become children of God. As God’s children we are fully accepted, fully loved, forgiven and justified, able to live free from the fear of condemnation from God, other people or ourselves, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We live in the freedom of grace given us by God, and we therefore extend that grace to our family of faith and to the world.

(Rom. 10:9,10,13; Jhn. 3:16; Eph. 2:1-10, Gen. 1:26; Rom. 6:23, Jhn 1:12; Rom. 8:1)


6. THE NATURE OF GRACE, FAITH, AND REGENERATION

We affirm the belief that salvation is a gift of God received by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is deliverance from all sin and unrighteousness through the applied blood of Jesus Christ. This happens when we place our faith securely in Christ as the way, the truth and the life, trusting in Christ for forgiveness for sin and a restored relationship with the Father, and making Him our King, surrendering our entire lives to Him and His will. Salvation begins with faith in Christ and will have its completion when we have graduated from this life. Regeneration is effected through the work of the Holy Spirit in those who have received Christ as King. All who repent and believe in Jesus Christ are forgiven of all their sins, justified in God's sight by the merit of Christ's righteousness, adopted into His family, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and have equal access to God. As a result, the progressive sanctifying work of salvation, empowered by the grace of God through His Holy Spirit, leads to a newness of life that is evidenced by righteous living, good works, and biblical social concern, or God's corrective discipline. The consummation of salvation is that those who have accepted God's gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ shall be resurrected and glorified. They shall receive their inheritance in the Kingdom of their Father, whom they shall see and enjoy throughout the ages.
 
(Joel 2:28-29, Isaiah 28:11, Matthew 28:19, John 3:5, Acts 1:8, 2:36-41, 4:12, 8:17, 10:44-46; 19:6. Romans 6:1-7, 8:2,)

7.  THE NATURE OF CHRISTIAN RECONCILIATION

We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. Understanding who He is, and who we are in light of our new natures, we therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he or she should be respected and served, not exploited. The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist. When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead. Christ sends his redeemed people into the world as the Father sent him. We need to break out of our ecclesiastical ghettos and permeate society. In the Church's mission of sacrificial service, evangelism is primary. World evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. The Church is at the very center of God's cosmic purpose and is his appointed means of spreading the gospel. But a church, which preaches the cross must itself be marked by the cross. It becomes a stumbling block to evangelism when it betrays the gospel or lacks a living faith in God, a genuine love for people, or scrupulous honesty in all things including promotion and finance. The church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology. The gospel does not presuppose the superiority of any culture over another, but evaluates all cultures according to its own criteria of truth and righteousness, and insists on moral absolutes in every culture. Missions have all too frequently exported with the gospel an alien culture and churches have sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to Christ. Christ's ambassadors must humbly seek to empty themselves of all but their personal authenticity in order to become the servants of others, and churches must seek to transform and enrich culture, all for the glory of God. We will continue in this mission until the day Christ will return and reign in power and splendor in a new, sinless age.

(Acts 17:26,31; Gen. 18:25; Isa. 1:17; Psa. 45:7; Gen. 1:26,27; Jas. 3:9; Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27,35; Jas. 2:14-26; Joh. 3:3,5; Matt. 5:20; 6:33; II Cor. 3:18; Jas. 2:20; Mark 7:8,9,13; Gen. 4:21,22; I Cor. 9:19-23; Phil. 2:5-7; II Cor. 4:5)