The Church’s calling, hope and destiny are heavenly, and its chief functions are to glorify God and to witness for Christ until His return. The local Church is composed of believer in a locality who gathers in Christ’s name for worship, prayer, edification and testimony. Government and discipline are divinely outlined in the Epistles as being the responsibility of the local Church. We believe that until He returns the responsibility of all believers is to follow the great commission to proclaim the Gospel to all people by all means possible.
The Bible is inspired of God, inerrant in the original documents, and of final authority in all matters of faith and practice. We believe that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as verbally inspired by God are inerrant in the original writings, are the Word of God, and the final authority in faith and conduct.
There is one God, creator of man and all things, eternally existent in three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Lord Jesus Christ is fully God, born of a virgin, sinless perfect. His sacrifice is substitutionary and representative.
We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned and thereby incurred not only physical death but also spiritual death, which is separation from God; that Adam’s sin is imputed to the whole race of mankind; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature.
Redemption is wholly by the blood of Christ and salvation is by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Church began with the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and is composed of all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. These believers are united to Him and to one another by the indwelling Spirit. This means that the Church, as a whole, is not an organization, but a living organism, known as the Body of Christ.
The Holy Spirit indwells the believer, who is sealed until the day of redemption and is empowered to live a godly life. Christ, our risen Head, is the Giver of gifts, such as evangelists, pastors and teachers, and the men are responsible to Him for their service. They are given “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
There are two Christian ordinances; baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism by immersion signifies that the believer, having died with Christ, is buried with Him in baptism and also is raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial feast, instituted by the Lord Himself exclusively for His own. In the observance of this supper, believers remember Him; they show His death until He comes, and they function as worshipping priests before God.
Every true child of God possesses eternal life and, being justified, sanctified and sealed with the Holy Spirit, is safe and secure for all eternity. However, a Christian can, through sin, lose his fellowship, joy, power, testimony, and reward, and incur the Father’s chastisement. Relationship is eternal, being established by new birth; fellowship, however, is dependent upon obedience.
The personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ to translate His Church is imminent, an event which concludes the present age of grace. There will be a resurrection of the saved and of the lost; of the saved, unto eternal life, and of the lost, unto eternal and conscious judgment.