What We Believe

We're a gospel church
The Bible's summary of the gospel (ie, 'good news') is:

'that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve…'
(1 Corinthians 15.3-4).

The background to that is the Bible's diagnosis of what's gone wrong in the world – namely, that we've each rejected God as our rightful ruler, and lived our own way instead. The result is that we hurt others, ourselves and God's world – but, above all, that we deserve God's judgement.

Against that background the amazing news is that, in his love for us, God gave his Son to become a man and to die on the cross – taking the judgement we deserve, so that we could be forgiven without God compromising his justice. God then raised Jesus from the dead to show that his claims were really true. And we believe Jesus is alive in heaven today as the rightful ruler and future judge of all people. So the greatest need of anyone is to receive his forgiveness, along with his Spirit to change and enable them to live for Jesus as Lord.

We study from the Bible
Since we believe Jesus is the Son of God, we accept his view of the Bible. So on his authority, we believe it to be inspired by God – which means that, by his Spirit, God supervised the human writers of the Bible so that what they wrote was exactly what he intended, to communicate his truth.

As a result, we believe that the Bible is God's Word and so has supreme authority, above human reason or church tradition, to tell us what to believe and how to live. But we also believe we should use both reason and tradition to understand the Bible rightly. We believe, as well, that the Bible is a unity; that it remains God's living, contemporary Word to us today; and that it's all we need to know, to come into relationship with God and to live in relationship with him this side of heaven.

Practically, that means the Bible is at the center of all we do, as we aim to know and serve Jesus, and make him known. We believe that there is only one true God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that this God has called us to be a family of believers serving him. We believe this God created the universe, redeemed us through Jesus Christ and empowers us through the Holy Spirit. We believe the Bible is God’s word and it tells us that there is only one way to eternal life, and that is through Jesus.

Church
We hold to an evangelical and reformed understanding of the Christian Faith. We serve God through expressive worship, personal transformation, and credible witness.

There’s no need to be an expert in the Bible before you get here. We’ll take each step with you along the way. In fact, if you’d like a Bible to check things out for yourself, just let us know!