Our Beliefs

Our core values are what help to focus our energies and drive our ministries.  They are the rules which govern how we arrive at our vision.  We are passionate about these values, and desire that they guide us in all that we do so that they describe what we are actually like more and more over time.  By no means do we claim to have excelled in these areas already.  Would God have you to join us in helping make these values a reality?

We major upon sharing God’s truth through the systematic preaching and teaching of God’s Word.  More than that, we strive to model that truth in our personal lives.  Underlying our stress on biblical instruction is a firm conviction that the Bible is the final authority concerning what is actually true.  Our  Articles of Faith summarize our shared understanding of truth in key subject areas.

We agree with God that unity is vital to the church’s life and witness.  Therefore we are committed to worshipping and working together across our generational differences, our varieties of opinion, our unique styles and personal preferences; maintaining an attitude of mutual submission and respect for the needs and desires of one another.

We desire to extend compassion to hurting people, realizing that people don't care about what we know until they know that we care. Whether through physical relief or spiritual counsel, our goal is nothing less than reclamation of the whole person for the glory of God.

We believe in the need to build and preserve meaningful relationships among believers as a way to foster a sense of belonging and to stimulate growth through biblical fellowship. Our desire is to maintain a network of Adult Fellowships and Ministry Teams where people know, love, and care for each other while they joyfully serve together.

We want to be an assembly of believers whose hearts are broken over the plight of lost people. We want that God would plant in our hearts such a love for people as to compel us to reach them with the saving Gospel. Our desire is to be used of God to rescue lost people from the captivity and consequence of sin.

We have a passion to develop every believer to his or her full potential as a follower of Christ and a leader of people. Our leaders desire to replicate themselves in others, and to motivate them for God's service through a program of biblical discipleship and apprenticeship.

Driven by a firm conviction that nothing of eternal consequence is accomplished apart from God's help, we desire for every believer an active, daily prayer life. We are committed to promoting both corporate and personal prayer by every means at our disposal. This commitment to prayer means that we will not rely upon personality, programs, or publicity to arrive at our vision.

We love and value our families, believing that parents bear the primary responsibility to guide their children in their walk with Christ. That is why we are committed to innovating ways in which to partner with parents in raising their children to love and serve God. 

 For the most part, the following paragraphs summarize those beliefs which we consider to be absolutely essential to our Christian identity, serving as the formal basis and/or material substance of the Gospel. A complete listing of other (more distinctive) tenets may be found in the PBC Constitution.

We believe the Bible to be the Word of God, verbally and plenarily inspired of God and therefore -- in the original writings -- without error in all that it affirms. The Bible is the only complete and final revelation of God's will to man, and the supreme standard of all faith and practice (2 Tim 3:16-17, 2 Pet 1:19-21).

We believe in one God eternally existing, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent; and manifesting Himself in three persons -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- and that these three are equal in every divine perfection (Gen 1:1, Deut 6:4, Matt 28:19, 2 Cor 13:14).

We believe that the eternal Son of God became incarnate in the Lord Jesus Christ, being conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, and is true God and true man; that He lived a sinless life, gave Himself in death as a perfect substitutionary sacrifice for our sins, arose bodily from the grave, and ascended to heaven at the right hand of the Father, where He presently makes intercession for the saints. We believe in the personal, visible, and bodily return of Christ to the earth at the end of the age (Matt 1:18; John 1:1, 14; Matt 20:28; 1 Pet 1:18-19; 1 Cor 15:3-4, 14; Acts 1:11; Rom 8:34; 1 Thess 4:16-17).

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person possessed of all the divine perfections, and that He regenerates, baptizes (i.e., joins), indwells, and seals all believers in Christ immediately upon salvation. He is the administer of the things of God -- convicting of sin, revealing truth, energizing believers in matters of prayer and service, and restraining evil "until He is taken out of the way" (Psa 139:7-10, John 16:7-14, 2 Thess 2:7).

We believe that God made man in His own image, and that man came into the world by a direct creative act of God and not evolution. We believe in the scriptural record concerning the fall of man through disobedience to God, and that by nature and apart from God's grace, man is now "dead in trespasses and sins" and alienated from God (Gen 1:26-27, 9:6; Psa 51:5; Rom 5:12, Eph 2:1; Col 1:21).

We believe that salvation is received by grace alone through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ, on the ground of His shed blood and altogether apart from human merit, and that every person is a sinner by birth and by choice and therefore must exercise personal faith in Christ in order to be saved (Eph 2:8-9; Titus 3:5; Psa 51:5; Rom 3:23,10:9-10).

We believe that the Church is composed of all true believers joined by the Holy Spirit into one body that is Christ's; and that the local church is an assembly of saved, baptized believers who regularly gather for the purposes of worship, fellowship, administration of the ordinances, edification, discipline, and effective promotion of the work of Christ throughout the world (Acts 2:41-42; Eph 1:22; Heb 10:24-25).

We believe in the bodily resurrection of all men, the saved to a heaven of everlasting blessedness in the presence of God, and the unsaved to the lake of fire of judgment and everlasting punishment, which is the second death (Rev 21:1-8).

We believe it is the solemn obligation of every believer to commend Christ to the unsaved by a holy lifestyle and active verbal witness, in obedience to the Savior's command to give the Gospel to the whole world (Matt 28:19).