The simple, ancient convictions at the center of our church
Every church believes something. Here is what we hold on to, drawn from Scripture and shared across two thousand years of Christian faith. Five short tenets, each one at the center of why we gather, why we serve, and why we keep coming back.
Who God is
Everything else we believe flows from who we understand God to be. So this is where we start, and where we keep coming back.
We believe in one God, eternal and good, who made the world and everything in it. He is not a distant force or a cosmic therapist. He is a Father who knows us by name, and who made us on purpose.
We believe this one God has always existed as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not three Gods. One God, whose very being is relationship, whose very nature is love spilling outward, and whose plan from the beginning has been to draw us into that love.
If God is who the Bible says he is, nothing about our lives stays the same. Every other tenet we hold to is really just an attempt to take that first sentence seriously.
Who we are
Scripture says every human being carries the fingerprint of God, and also carries the weight of being broken. Six short statements on what that means for how we see ourselves and the people around us.
Why the cross
Every culture has tried to explain the pain of being human. At the center of Christian faith stands one stubborn, scandalous answer: a Roman cross outside Jerusalem, and an empty tomb three days later. Four reasons the cross still stands at the center of our church.
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01
Because Jesus actually lived
We believe Jesus of Nazareth was a real person, in real history, who lived a real life of sinless love and spoke real words we can still read and trust today.
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02
Because his death was not a tragedy
The cross was not something that happened to Jesus against his will. It was the plan, the moment God himself took the weight of our brokenness on his own shoulders so we would not have to carry it alone.
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03
Because the tomb was empty
Three days after the cross, Jesus walked out of the grave. That single event is the reason we gather on Sundays, the reason we have any hope worth talking about, and the reason death is not the last word on any of us.
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04
Because grace is a gift, not a wage
The whole story of the cross is that we could never earn what God wanted to give. So he gave it anyway. Trusting that gift, and living like it is true, is the heart of the Christian life.
Our hope
Christian hope is not a feeling or a hobby. It is a firm, quiet confidence in what God has already done and what he has promised to do. Five practical places that hope shows up in ordinary life.
"Our calling is to love God with everything we are, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the whole of the Christian life. Everything else is commentary on those two sentences."The Great Commandment, Matthew 22
Bring your questions. We mean it.
Nobody has ever been asked to check their brain at the door here. If you are wrestling with any of this and want to talk it through with a real person, we would love to make that easy.