Beliefs & Values

Our church is a part of the Advance Movement of churches (www.advancemovement.com), a partnership that plants and strengthens churches.
We subscribe to its beliefs and values, and our Statement of Faith and our Values have been adapted from the following document:
About Advance Booklet

1. The one true God, who lives eternally in three persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

2. The love, grace and sovereignty of God in creating, sustaining, ruling, redeeming and judging the world.

3. The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God - fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.

4. The dignity of all people, made male and female in God's image, to love, be holy and care for creation; yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgment.

5. The incarnation of God's eternal son, the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the virgin, Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.

6. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price for sin and defeating evil - and so reconciling us with God.

7. The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection, his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the only savior of the world.

8. The justification of sinners solely by the grace of God, through faith in Christ.

9. The ministry of God, the Holy Spirit, who leads us to repentance, unites us with Christ through new birth, empowers our discipleship and enables our witness.

10. The Church, the body of Christ (both local and universal,) the priesthood of all believers - given life by the Spirit and endowed with the Spirit's gifts to worship God and proclaim the gospel, promoting justice and love.

11. The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to fulfill the purposes of God, who will raise all people to judgment, bring eternal life to the redeemed and eternal condemnation to the lost, and establish a new heaven and new earth.

"Gospel-centered" refers to the Biblical approach of ministry that keeps the gospel message at the center of all ministry, whether to believers or unbelievers. Belief in the gospel is the means by which we enter God's kingdom; and it is also the means by which we make progress in the kingdom. The good news of the gospel contains both the power and motivation for salvation, and everything within salvation. We desire to help unbelievers and believers increasingly believe and apply the gospel to every area of their lives.

We are convinced that God intends every church to be an outward-focused mission agency (both locally and globally), and that he intends all believers to be on mission. We desire to equip and inspire our members to bring people to Christ. We also desire to be on mission more broadly by way of community-serving initiatives and church planting.

Because Jesus himself made disciples and commissioned all believers to make disciples, our goal is for every believer to become a disciple-making disciple. We desire to actively make disciple-making disciples who know, love and obey Jesus. Courses and tools may help, but discipleship happens via intentional relationships, as well as via small groups that prioritize this.

We believe that we should be in eager and intelligent pursuit of the presence, power, fruit and gifts of God's Spirit, as mentioned in the Bible. In this regard, we are continuationist. We also believe that all believers should heed the Biblical call to be filled with the Spirit, and remain filled, throughout their lives.

We believe that our church should be led by a called and capable team of elders with a team leader who is "first among equals." We hold to the Biblical ideal of plurality and consensus in leadership. The team of elders should lovingly guard, guide and govern the church.

We believe in the autonomy of the local church, in which elders are the highest governing authority over that church, but we do not believe it is healthy or wise for a church to be independent. Our primary accountability and counsel comes through our relationship with Advance Movement, and our desire is that our elders enjoy ongoing, meaningful connections with respected voices in Advance to help them fulfill their calling.
 
Note: As we currently have one elder (Jonas Lee), we will have two external elders, Alan Frow & Kevin Meisch (from Southlands Church) serving as “co-elders” to support and help oversee our church, until we appoint additional elders internally.

We believe baptism is a declaration of faith made by the person being baptized and a physical picture of the spiritual reality of our union with Christ. In this regard, we are credo-Baptist.