Our Beliefs

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We believe in one true God who has revealed himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is immortal and transcendent and created everything else in the universe; he existed before and independently of the material universe, and his values define the reality of good and evil.

 

We believe that the Bible is our first and final authority for life, faith, and godliness. We may disagree from time to time about how to interpret the Bible, but we affirm it as the core and foundation of what we know about God, and we are committed to letting God’s word judge us instead of the other way around. Other books or teachings, science and philosophy, or “prophetic words” often contain truth and are helpful, but they do not replace or even equal the Bible.

 

We believe that when God took on human flesh in the form of Jesus Christ, he gave us his ultimate revelation about his nature. The Old Testament, which Jesus fulfilled, points forward towards Christ; the letters and epistles of the New Testament point back towards Christ; “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

 

We believe that all people have personally sinned - that is, we have all committed evil acts and thought evil thoughts that have separated us from God. We believe that there is nothing we can do to repair our relationship with God, but that God has already taken the initiative through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, to forgive our sins and win us back to himself. God gave us this free gift because he loves us and wants us to live our lives in a personal relationship with him. He uses many examples of human relationships to describe the depth and power of the relationship he desires with us: a father and his children; a king and his friends; a husband with his bride; a teacher with his followers; a shepherd with his sheep; and so on.

 

We believe that, while God has offered us the free gift of life, we are responsible to receive that gift by repenting of our sins and placing our faith in Jesus Christ. When we receive that gift, we are born again as brand-new spiritual people, and our new life is marked by a life-long relationship of discipleship and friendship with Christ. This means Jesus is both our savior and our Lord - because he bought us with his own blood, we owe him obedience and worship. We recognize that it is in this life-long process of discipleship that many of our human disagreements and conflicts arise; we are committed to walking together and remaining connected, always seeking the high ground of the “weightier matters of...justice, mercy, and faith”.

 

We believe that when Jesus instructed us to pray that his kingdom would come on earth just as it is in heaven, he was reconnecting us with our original mission as a species: to steward God’s world in a way that brings blessing to creation as well as all aspects of human society. We affirm the calling of believers who work at home, in education or government, in the church or in business, in the arts or the sciences; it is our ways that distinguishes us from the world, not our involvement.

 

We believe that Jesus demonstrated his Kingdom with supernatural signs and wonders as a normative example to follow. For this reason, the Holy Spirit remains active and available to all believers; along with being our comforter and counsellor, and along with the “fruit” of the Spirit, the Spirit still gives God’s people signs, wonders, miracles, prophecies, dreams, and so on, just as he did in Bible times.

We believe that when we are born again, God adopts us into his family, the church. Without participating in the church we are like orphans, and our souls become as lonely and distorted as long-abandoned children.

 

We believe that when we are born again, our spirits gain access to heaven. We experience heavenly realities in part in this life through the Holy Spirit, and we will also be raised from the dead to enjoy God ultimately and triumphantly and eternally in the after-life, when we will live and reign with Christ in the fullness of heaven.

 

We believe that just as God gives us the freedom to choose eternal life with him, God also gives us the freedom to choose eternal life without him. God respects human freedom so much that he has provided a reality, commonly called “hell”, for those who want nothing to do with him after this life. Existence without God is so horrible that Jesus described it as being like an unending fire, but also with worms, and deep darkness. We beg all people to choose God, no matter what they feel repentance may cost them in the short term.