What We Believe
We subscribe to the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) as our primary doctrinal statement. It covers the basics of our beliefs and is organized by topic. Several major highlights are listed below.
​
The Bible
We believe that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. "It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter."
​
God
God is the perfect creator of the universe. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good. He exists as a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
​
Man
"Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God's creation."
Since the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, the nature of mankind is sinful and all men are in need of salvation.
​
Salvation
"Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord."
​
The Church
"A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel."
​
"Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
​
Baptism
"Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus."
​
It has no saving power, but is nevertheless commanded of all believers.
​
The Lord's Supper
"The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming."
​
The Family
"God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption."
​
"Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime."
​
"The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."
​
"Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord."