|
is that the church comes together primarily to
worship God through his son the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are a
Baptist
church. In the great commission Jesus told the 11 disciples to “go
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you.”
So the proper order is for folks to become Christians
(disciples), then be baptized, and then be instructed in all the
Scripture.
This is why we only baptize those who give evidence of
having become disciples first. Then comes the responsibility of the
church to teach the new disciples and the new disciples to learn the
Scriptures and obey its teachings.
We are also a
reformed
church. Reformed or reform refers most often to the Protestant
Reformation in the 1500”s. God brought about a great awakening and
discovery of the truth of Scripture which largely lay hidden behind
the superstitions, traditions, and immorality of the dominant
religious system for many centuries.
Many in those days paid in blood for this new-found
faith in Jesus Christ. But God was with them and the church of Jesus
Christ arose and spread throughout Europe much as the church grew in
the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
There are some clear marks of a reformed church:
1.
The Bible is our only source of authority in matters of
what we believe, how we live and how we worship.
2.
Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Mediator between God and sinful
people – apart from him there is no Savior.
3.
Salvation comes to sinners by God’s grace alone, not by
our works, through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
4.
The most important aspect of our worship and all our services is the
preaching and teaching of the Bible. Dramas, dance, etc, have no
place in New Testament worship so they should have no place in worship
in Christ’s churches today. The word of God read and preached must be
central in worship. (In our day of new fads in worship, we believe we
must stick with what is clearly revealed in the New Testament and seek
to worship God in God’s way, not our own way.)
5. Worship is meant to be filled with reverence for the true and
living God before whom the angels of heaven cry without end, “Holy,
Holy, Holy.” We believe worship is to be joyful, but a joy given by
the Lord himself and we are at His mercy for that. On our own we
cannot produce true joy in worship. True worship of the God of heaven
is man’s highest activity possible. We would like you to come and
worship with us.
|
