Statement of Faith

Scripture

We hold Scripture to be trustworthy and authoritative.

Not every version or translation is of equal quality. William Tyndale insisted on going back to the original languages and it cost him everything, and his witness still shapes how English-speaking readers meet the text. Questions of transmission, language, and history matter here because they decide what is actually being read.

That is a claim about translation, not about Scripture. The text is reliable. Our access to it passes through choices somebody made, and those choices can be examined.

God and creation

Creation is the deliberate work of God, brought into being by His will.

We hold to a young earth, with one distinction stated plainly because careful readers notice it. From the fourth day forward, the days are ordinary solar days. What "day" means before the sun, moon and stars existed we do not claim, because a solar day cannot be measured before there is a sun.

This is not the day-age position. Day-age reads all six days as long epochs. We read the days after the fourth as ordinary days.

Jesus

Jesus is fully God and fully man. He was born of a virgin. He rose bodily from the
dead, and he will return bodily.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit indwells those who believe, and is not a force.

We are less certain about the word usually used next. "Person" is a term that
arrived through Western philosophy, and in ordinary English a person is a created being. The Spirit is eternal and uncreated. So we affirm what the word is reaching for, that the Spirit is someone rather than something, and we are still working out whether "person" is the right word for it or a borrowed one that carries baggage it should not.

That is an open question about vocabulary, not about the Spirit.

Salvation

Salvation is by grace, through faith, in Christ alone.

Works are the evidence of faith rather than a contribution to it. A believer should
bear fruit, and the absence of any is worth paying attention to. But the fruit is
what faith produces, never what earns it.

We do not claim a settled position on eternal security.

The Church

The Church is first the whole body of believers, and second the local congregation
you belong to.

The second part looked different at the beginning than most of us picture. They met in synagogues and in houses. They ate together. They took communion as part of a meal rather than as a ceremony inside a service. That first-century shape is what we are working toward, not as a criticism of anyone gathering another way, but because we think something was carried in it that is worth recovering.

Covenant and redemption

God has been at work to redeem since Genesis 3, where the seed of the woman is promised against the serpent. That work runs through a series of covenants, each one building on the last, and it is the frame we read the whole Bible in.

A covenant is cut, not merely agreed. It creates a boundary, and it provides atonement for those inside it. Noah's obedience demonstrated his faith, and he entered a covenant he had not earned and could not have fulfilled on his own.

How we read

We read the text in the world it came from: who is present, where the scene takes place, what time of day it might be. Sometimes we look up a single word and leave the rest alone. When more of that world comes back into view, the reading does not stay quite the same.

We are still learning to read this way, and some days go better than others.

It is less about adopting a framework and more about learning to slow down. Some days, that attentiveness comes easily. Other days it doesn’t.

What we have not settled yet

Three things are missing from this page. We would rather name them than let the gaps speak for us.

The Trinity. We have not written a section on it. That is not avoidance and it is not a denial. The word carries a long history of careful definition, and we want to understand that history properly before signing our name to a summary of it. When that work is done, it goes here.

Israel and the covenants. The covenants are the frame we read the whole Bible in, which is exactly why we are not going to summarize this one quickly.

Last things. Also coming, and for the same reason.

If you need to know where we stand on any of these before you read further, ask. We will tell you what we think and where we are still working.