Our Biblical Beliefs
The Bible
We try to take a simple approach to the Bible. Our motto is “What Does The Bible Say?” and we answer every question with that as our starting point. We believe in the power of every Christian being a minister within our group so that we can make sure we are following the whole Bible. We are not affiliated with a denomination so we are not bringing any previous human traditions into our church that are made to be more Holy and true than what the Bible asks us to do.
The Lord’s Supper
We enjoy remembering what Jesus did for us on the cross because it connects us to him in a way that is extremely important. Jesus asked his disciples in Luke 20:19-20 to remember him this way and we believe that it is important to continue to do this. We typically eat some homemade bread with grape juice with our meal that we share together and have a time of communion and remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice for us like they did in the New Testament church.
Baptism
We believe that baptism is essential to our eternal salvation once we have decided to become disciples of Jesus. We follow the command of baptism as presented in Acts 2:37-41, Acts 8:12, Acts 22:16, Colossians 2:12, Galatians 3:27, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:1-4 and many other places in the Bible! Jesus told us to believe and be baptized to be saved, so that’s what we believe! Because we do not allow any unbiblical denominational teachings in our church, we do not support or endorse infant baptism, sprinkling baptisms, or the idea that salvation occurs when Jesus is “accepted into your heart”. None of that is in the Bible. All baptisms in the Bible were preceded by faith and baptism is complete immersion in water. That’s what the Bible teaches and we are very careful not to remove the importance of how Jesus washes our sins away during baptism and we are also equally careful not to add denominational teachings surrounding baptism either. In Galatians 1, Paul calls distortion of the gospel of Christ to be accursed, thus we take very seriously the salvation of Christ’s disciples in the command and act of baptism.
Click here for our Statements of Faith video titled “The Fundamental Importance of Baptism” for more!
God’s Grace
One of the most difficult concepts as humans to grasp is that we are not saved because of any kind of effort on our part (Ephesians 2:8-9). We believe that God has called us to Him to accept His gift of grace and eternal life with Him and yet this makes us want to work all the more for Him to bring others with us to heaven! We believe that this search for a better knowledge of this concept is what continues to bring us back together again and again. In fact, we believe that the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross will take an eternity in heaven to understand. That’s just how great our God is!
“Tithing”
We don’t require a “collection” or “tithe” from you at our house church. Your time, gas money, food etc. is a way of giving and we appreciate that. We expect you to be responsible for how you spend and give your money as you see fit. If you feel led to give monetarily to support our mission, email us on the contact page!
Elders
Our house church does not follow the modern hierarchical structure of modern churches where people called “elders” have basically become business decision makers and practice very little shepherding of their church family. If you are a man who has the qualities of an elder as described in 1 Timothy, and you believe in the fundamental truth that you and your family were or will be saved by Jesus in the act of baptism, then you are an elder in our church. Elders in our church are not voted in by an unbiblical committee or random voting concept, they are naturally identified by their actions and qualities and organically become shepherds rather than needing to be given a title to stroke their ego. All men in our congregation are encouraged to seek after the qualities of an elder without seeking after the title.
Eschatology
Modern denominations spend an inordinate amount of time being distracted by eschatology, or end-times philosophy. We waste no time discussing these concepts. Jesus is coming back. Heaven and hell exist. That’s as far as we’re going to get into discussing what happens at the end of this age. Jesus has commanded us to be focused on discipling, baptizing, and training everyone we can. Let’s simplify our focus and get to work!