OUR BELIEFS

What we believe the Bible teaches about Christian faith and practice is referred to as our church doctrine. At Faith Presbyterian Church, our doctrine can be summarized as "Gospel-Centered and Grace-Orientated".

The Gospel teaches and informs both non-Christians and Christians fundamental truths about ourselves and our relationship with God. For non-Christians, it teaches us the way of reconciliation and peace with God and eternal life. For Christians, it teaches that we are "worse than we think" and more "accepted by God than we ever dreamed possible" at the same time.

It also teaches that God's love for us in and through Jesus Christ is not conditioned on our performance - "when we're good, God doesn't love us more, and when we're bad, he doesn't love us less." We also believe that all of our problems stem from a failure to properly understand and apply the Gospel to our lives. Thus, we seek to preach the Gospel to ourselves and live in line with the truth of the Gospel every day (Galatians 2:14).

In summary, to be "Gospel-centered" means we hold the Gospel as taught in the Scriptures to provide not just the way to eternal peace and life with God, but also the only truly effective and lasting means for dealing with our individual issues and struggles and the problems and challenges facing our community, state, nation and the world including poverty (too little money), materialism (too much money and debt), racism, broken homes and relationships, and polluted minds and natural environments.

Living in line with the truth of the Gospel on a daily basis is not easy, and we depend upon God's grace, the power of the Holy Spirit and the people God has placed around us in our church community to help us. As Christians, we admit that we are imperfect people and often "mess up." Consequently, we believe that even on our very worst days, we are not beyond the reach of God's grace and outside of his love — not because of anything we have done, but because of what has been done for us by the Holy Trinity.

By grace, God sent his son Jesus Christ to live the perfect life we cannot live and pay the price for our sins. By grace, Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross to cancel our sin-debts so that his perfect life and record could be credited to us as Christians. By grace, when he left this earth, Jesus sent to Holy Spirit to guide, encourage and empower us to live a Gospel-centered life. Without this help from the Holy Spirit, we believe our efforts to live a Gospel-centered life will fail.

That is, we believe that Christian growth (our sanctification), like our salvation (justification), is an act of God's grace we receive through faith. This truth is something we may take for granted or forget when things are going well in our lives, and we're tempted to give ourselves and our efforts the credit. The truth is that even on our very best days we are not beyond the need of God's grace and his love.

Our need of God's grace is reflected in the fact that before God asks us to do something (the imperative) he give us something which enables us to do it (the indicative) — the imperative always follows the indicative. For example, God gives us love so that we may have love and share love (Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:19). God gives us faith so that we may have faith and share faith (Ephesians 2:8-9; Galatians 3:11). God gives us righteousness through Christ so that we may experience and share His holiness (Romans 1:17; 1 Peter 1:15-16).

At Faith Presbyterian Church, we desire to be a "Gospel-Centered and Grace-Orientated" community as reflected in our individual lives and in our corporate events and activities including community outreach, Christian education, fellowship & encouragement, MIC, missions, outreach, small groups, WIC and worship. The above discussion provides a short synopsis of what we believe the Bible teaches about the Gospel and grace and the types of basic messages the Session desires to see permeating our ministries. The basic messages about the Gospel and grace discussed above are sometimes referred to as the "doctrines of grace." For a much more formal discussion of the "doctrines of grace" from a Reformed perspective, we refer the reader to the Westminster Confession of Faith which is the statement of faith for the church denomination Faith Presbyterian Church is affiliated with, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

It should be noted that in the PCA, only church officers (Elders and Deacons) are required to hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith as a personal statement or summary of what one believes is the system of doctrine taught in the Bible. The only requirement for church membership is a genuine profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

With respect to specific doctrinal issues (such as Infant Baptism), our approach at Faith Presbyterian Church is to teach and encourage a Reformed perspective on doctrinal issues in a gentle and winsome way. As a church community, we find that there is much in a "Gospel-Centered, Grace-Orientated" approach to ministry that Christians from different evangelical backgrounds can agree upon and provides shared ground and a firm basis for enthusiastically working together to expand God's kingdom in our local area, state, nation and the world.