DISTINCTIVES
We Are Reformed
We are descendants of the Protestant Reformation. Our church follows the lineage of the English Puritans and the Scottish Covenanters. We are a confessional church and hold to the Five Solas of the Reformation as well as the Doctrines of Grace as more particularly articulated in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.
We Are Baptist
The Reformed Baptist confession of faith agrees almost completely with other reformed confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith, with a couple exceptions.
The two distinctives involve the administration of the sacrament of baptism and church government.
Baptists believe that baptism is by immersion in water for those who repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe individuals are baptized into Christ, and therefore into His body, which is manifested in membership in a local church (Rom 6:3-5, Mark 16:16, Matt 3:16).
Baptists also believe that the local church is to be governed congregationally, under the leadership of elders and deacons. The male heads of household in the church govern by vote regarding the officers and members of the church (Acts 20: 17,28, Matt 18:17-18, 1 Cor 5:4-13, 2 Cor 2:6-8).
We Are Expositional
Jesus said that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).
We believe that preaching ought to be the bold proclamation of the Word of God. We do this by regularly preaching through books of the Bible. We seek to understand, declare, and apply all of God's Word to our lives and the world. (2 Tim 2:15, Philippians 4:9, James 1:22).
We Are Postmillenial
Jesus has established His kingdom on this earth in His incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension (Mark 1:15).
The age of the church is the millennium, an age in which Jesus reigns at the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19), putting His enemies under His feet (1 Corinthians 15:25). This age is one in which the Great Commission will be successful in seeing the nations converted to Jesus in repentance and faith.
We believe that the gospel, as it bears fruit in individual hearts, will transform families, cultures, and nations as they seek to serve Christ. The nations will one day flow to Jesus (Isaiah 2:2), and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14).
We Are Congregational Psalm Singing
God commands us in the book of Ephesians: "But be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:18-19). We believe that singing Psalms should be a regular part of the worship of the people of God, the book of Psalms being the songbook of the Bible. Singing psalms and lyrically rich, biblical hymns helps us to align our hearts with God's will, and to praise that which God declares to be praiseworthy.