Our biggest desire for our community is that we would be a place that you would belong, regardless of whether or not you believe what we believe or act the way we act.
That being said, you may be curious what it is that we do believe. Our beliefs flow out of three basic principles: grace, truth, and love.
Grace
You can belong to God, regardless of what you have done or have not done. We believe that there is nothing that we need to do in order to earn a relationship with God. Not only do we not need to earn this grace, God gives it to us despite anything bad that we have done. Jesus paid the penalty for all sin so that we could be adopted into the family of God.
Truth
We believe that God has revealed his truth to us through the Bible. We believe that the Bible is founded in history and that the Bible provides us a framework for life that not only benefits us, but everyone around us.
Love
Because God loves us, we love others. When Christians bring the love of Jesus into every relationship, the world changes. God places this love in each of his children so that they can share that love with the world. This Church is designed to be for God and for the community.
Other Common Questions
The Bible is God’s primary way of speaking to us today and it’s unlike any other religious writing in the world.
It contains 66 books, produced by more than 40 writers (including shepherds, kings, fishermen, doctors, prophets, etc.), over the span of more than 1,500 years, across three continents, in three languages. Yet, it contains one cohesive message of the creation, fall, and redemption of humanity through Jesus Christ.
God has clearly guided the process of writing, gathering, and preserving His words through humanity and throughout history.
The Bible is an inerrant and inspired message from God that is powerful and eternally life-changing.
2 Timothy 3:16-17; Psalm 119:105; Hebrews 4:12; John 5:39; Psalm 19:7-14
Trinity
God has existed in relationship with Himself for all eternity.
The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one God, but states that the one God is manifested in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). In other words, He is one divine essence but exists as three persons.
Our best attempts to explain this reality fall short, but the clearest example is a mathematical analogy that God is described better through multiplication than through addition.
Rather than thinking of each person of the Trinity as 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, we can better understand Him as 1 x 1 x 1 = 1.
God has chosen to reveal this reality that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all fully and equally God, yet God is one.
Matthew 3:13-17; Matthew 28:18-20; Deuteronomy 6:4; John 1:1; Genesis 1:26; John 14; Colossians 1:15
The Father
The Father is good. Our very definitions of what is “good” and what is “evil” are born out of the nature of God The Father.
At the very core of who The Father is, He is love. He is holy, perfect, and righteous. The Father is all-powerful, all-knowing and ever-present. Simply by the power of His Word, He spoke the universe into existence. From creation to redemption, The Father has completed and is completing His work through The Son and The Holy Spirit.
Genesis 1:1; 1 John 4:7-12; 1 Timothy 6:15-16; Job 38; Job 39; Exodus 3
The Son
Jesus is what makes Christianity different from all other religions.
Every other religion in the world is about requirements, expectations for what we must do to work our way to God. The good news of Christianity is something completely different: God, in His love, in His grace, and in His mercy, has reached out to us in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Rather than waiting for us to attempt the impossible mission of earning our way to Him, God Himself took on the form of a human to reach us right where we are. Jesus is God in the flesh; if you want to know who God is like, look at Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life and it is through Jesus’ sacrifice alone that the penalty we deserve for our sin can be paid. Jesus willingly went to the cross and three days later rose from the dead, showing us that He has conquered even sin and death. If He has conquered death, it means He holds the keys to life—and He offers this life to anyone who will trust in Him.
Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:15-23; John 1:14; Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 53
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit guides us to Jesus and His presence reassures us of our relationship with God.
Everything the Holy Spirit does points people to Jesus. The Holy Spirit was sent to serve as a guide for those who will follow Jesus after Jesus rose from the dead and returned to heaven. The Holy Spirit leads our hearts and minds to the truth that we wouldn’t be able to see without Him. He convicts us of our sin, He comforts us with truth, He gives us understanding when reading the Bible, He empowers those who follow Jesus to serve and accomplish God’s purposes, and He ultimately makes us more like Christ.
John 14:26; John 16:7-11; Genesis 1:2; Romans 8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 2:12-15
Humanity
The bad news about humanity is that we are all broken.
The good news is that God specializes in redeeming what’s broken. God spoke all things into existence by the power of His Word, but when it came time to make man, He did things completely differently.
God uniquely created man from the dust of the ground and intimately breathed life into his body. God made man special in His image and He is crazy about us. Every single person on earth is someone God absolutely loves and values. The reality is that everyone spends eternity somewhere and the things we do in this life matter. Because of our sin, all of humanity has been separated from a relationship with God, but He is on a mission to restore that broken relationship and to transform our broken lives, from the inside out, through the work of the Holy Spirit.
God hates sin because it destroys our relationship with Him and distorts everything He loves.
God, because He is God, must judge sin and make right everything that sin destroys. This includes defeating death so that it doesn’t have final power or the last word. Out of love and to conquer the eternal consequences of sin, God stepped into our place through Jesus Christ and endured His own judgment for sin on our behalf. Only God could do that in a way that is adequate for all humanity. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, sin was exposed and defeated once and for all. Justice has been done, and when we trust what God did through Jesus as being the only sufficient solution to our sin, we are set free by this pure act of grace. Through faith we are reconciled to God and He begins the process of transforming our lives into what He meant for us all along. We are saved by God’s grace through our faith. Salvation is about being rescued from the eternal consequences of our sin in addition to being transformed in the here and now. This is not something we must earn; it is a free gift of God for those who will trust in Him.
John 14:6; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8-9; John 1:29; Genesis 3:15; Genesis 22:13-14
The end is just the beginning. The story of the Bible is presented as a beginning, middle, new beginning narrative.
This life is all about preparing for the next. One day, whenever God sees fit, Jesus will return, permanently end sin and death, and usher in an eternal existence for He and His church to live together.
Although nobody knows when this end will come, we do know that life is short and our end is coming soon. In the end, those who trusted in the sacrifice of Jesus to pay the penalty for their sins will spend eternity with Him; those who trusted in their own efforts will spend eternity separated from God in punishment for their sins. Until that day comes, our primary mission is to help people meet, know and follow Jesus.
Matthew 24:36-44; Revelation 21; Revelation 22; James 4:13-14; Isaiah 65:17-18; Matthew 25:31-46
We believe that baptism is one of the ways that God chooses to show us his love and grace. In baptism, we are given forgiveness and adopted into God’s family. We believe that baptism is for everyone. If you want to be baptized or if you want your child to be baptized, click here for more information.
We believe that communion is one of the ways that God continues to give us of his grace and forgiveness. In communion, God offers us the forgiveness that only he can give. We believe that God’s body and blood is mysteriously present in the bread and wine. We take communion on the first and third Sundays of every month.
Because of the complexity presented by recent history, we will succinctly define both our belief and how we express our belief, which carry equal importance.
What We Believe
We believe that male and female sexuality is a part of God’s original design and is created to bless us. We believe the Fall has corrupted God’s original intent for human sexuality in all persons; therefore everyone experiences brokenness in their sexuality.
We believe marriage is a lifelong one-flesh covenant union between two sexually different persons (male and female) from different families, and that all sexual relationships and expressions outside of marriage are sin.
We believe that the biological sex that you were born with is an essential part of your identity as a person that has been created in the image of God.
We believe experiencing same sex attraction (being gay) in itself is not a sin.
(Read more here).*
When attraction outside of marriage becomes a decided action in our minds and heart (lust) or is acted on physically, we believe that is sin.
Matthew 19:4-6, 1 Corinthians 6:18, Colossians 3:5, Hebrews 13:4,
1 Timothy 4:12, Genesis 1:27-28, 1 Timothy 5:22, Philippians 4:8
How We Express Our Belief
Regardless of sexual practice, sexual orientation, and/or how someone identifies, Faith welcomes all people to worship with us.
We are unapologetically aligned with every word of Jesus’ teaching. Equally, we are committed to being a community where those out-of-alignment with His beliefs (including sexuality) can come to meet Jesus and feel welcomed.
If you have more questions about this, we would love to talk with you more in person.
Click here to e-mail to schedule a time.
You can read more about what we believe and how we express it here.