The leadership of our church is committed to upholding the teaching of the Bible, which we believe is well summarised in the Westminster Confession of Faith. The full text is quite lengthy but well worth the read.  Here’s a quick summary of the summary 🙂

1.  The Bible was written by people but God organised things so that they said want he wanted to say.  (The evidence for the accurate preservation and translation of the Bible is publicly available.)

2. God is not an invisible human with superpowers.  God exists in a way that goes beyond anything we experience.  A good example of this is that God is only one being, yet he experiences relationships in himself as three persons: God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

3.  Another example is that God controls everything that happens, and yet not in a way that takes away our responsibility for our decisions or makes him responsible for our bad decisions, thoughts, or actions.

4.  God created everything else that exists.  God cares for all his creation, especially human beings who he created to be his family.  God doesn’t need creation to exist or to make him happy, he’s just cool.

5.  Human beings have rebelled against God our Heavenly Father seeking to live independently of him, doing things our own way, and being ungrateful for his care.   The punishment for this rebellion is that God gives us what we want. He gives us our independence.  And without God we die.  In one way or another, every human being who has ever lived has done this except for one person: Jesus Christ.

6.  Jesus Christ is both 100% God and 100% human.  He lived a perfect life, but died taking the punishment for sin so that whoever trusts him will live forever.  To seal the deal Jesus rose from the dead. Now he lives with his body forever with God.

7. People who trust Jesus want to be like him, show their gratitude, and live as God’s family as we are designed.  This means loving God and loving other people.

8.  We aren’t real good at this, but God has given us lots of instructions in the Bible, each other to encourage and challenge one another, and the Holy Spirit himself to help us.   We need to help each other to take God’s directions seriously, but also take our individual responsibility seriously.

9. The Lord Jesus has also given us two special symbols of his care.  These are Baptism and Communion.  Baptism is a simple water ceremony that represents being united with Christ, and therefore with his death and resurrection and receiving the Holy Spirit.  Communion is a simple ceremonial meal which represents Christ’s death.

10.  One day the Lord Jesus will come back and all people who have ever lived will have to answer to him for how they have lived.  We cannot know when it will happen but it will happen.  Those who are trusting Jesus are already forgiven for their rebellion.  Those who are continuing to rebel against God will be removed from God’s care forever.  Consequently it is a matter of utmost importance and urgency to tell everyone: be reconciled to God in Christ while the opportunity remains.