Who We Are

Get to know Grace Community Church.

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Statement of Faith

Our statement of faith condenses The Confessional Statement of The Gospel Coalition.

(1) The Triune God

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is worthy to receive all glory and adoration.

(2) Revelation

We believe that God has inspired the words of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. These writings alone constitute the Word of God, utterly authoritative, without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do.

(3) Creation of Humanity

We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to significant engagement in family, church, and civic life.

(4) The Fall

We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness – for himself and all his progeny – by falling into sin through Satan's temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being and condemned to death-apart from God's own gracious intervention.

(5) The Plan of God

We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end he foreknew them and chose them, all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.

(6) The Gospel

We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ – God's very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news centers on the cross and resurrection of Christ.

(7) The Redemption of Christ

We believe that, moved by love, the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified, rose on the third day and ascended into heaven as our representative and substitute. On the cross he canceled the debt of sin and reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death, defeated Satan, and brought everlasting life to all his people. By his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else.

(8) The Justification of Sinners

We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins. By his perfect obedience, he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God.

(9) The Power of the Holy Spirit

We believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ and, as "another Helper," is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus.

(10) The Kingdom of God

We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world nor become indistinguishable from it. Rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God.

(11) God's New People

We believe that God's new covenant people is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members' love for one another and for the world.

(12) Baptism and the Lord's Supper

We believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. They are God's pledge to us and our public submission to Christ.

(13) The Restoration of All Things

We believe in the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust-the unjust to eternal conscious punishment in hell and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by Christ, and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

Church Covenant

Having been brought by God’s grace to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we now, depending upon the Holy Spirit, establish this covenant with one another.

In all we do, we will aim to glorify and enjoy the God of our salvation, from whom and through whom and to whom are all things: to Him be all glory forever! (1 Cor. 10:31; Rom. 11:36)

We will eagerly maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace by walking together in love and in the Spirit and by putting away all bitterness, anger, and injurious speech. (Eph. 4:3; Gal. 5:16, 25; Eph. 4:29, 31)

With humility and gentleness, patience and love, we will be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven us. (Eph. 4:1-2; Luke 17:3; Col. 3:13; 1 Thess. 5:11; 1 Pet. 1:22)

We will carry each other’s burdens, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. (Gal. 6:2; Rom. 12:15)

We will train our children in the instruction of the Lord, seeking to walk in a way that adorns the gospel of Christ before our family, friends, and neighbors (Prov. 22:6; Eph. 6:4; 1 Pet. 3:1).

We will strive to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, as we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. (Gal. 5:22-24; Titus 2:12; 1 Pet. 1:14)

We will not neglect to gather together, but will support and treasure the biblical preaching of the whole counsel of God, the faithful observance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the loving exercise of church discipline. (Heb. 10:25; 2 Tim. 4:2; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 11:26; Matt 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:13)

We will contribute cheerfully and generously to the advancement of the gospel, to the expenses of the church, to the relief of the poor, both to our neighbors and the nations. (Matt. 28:19; Luke 12:33; 2 Cor. 9:7)

We will, when we move from this place, unite as soon as possible with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word.

In all these things, we rely on our God who has made a new and everlasting covenant with us, saying:

"And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul." (Jer. 32:38-41; Hebrews 8:8-12)

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen. 

(adopted April 22, 2012)

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Mission Statement

At Grace Community Church we want to live in such a way so that everything is to the Praise of the Glory of His Grace (Ephesians 1:6).

Praise is your approval of something that brings you pleasure, delight, and awe – like when eating a freshly baked apple pie . . . I mean a slice, you praise by saying, "mmm – that is so good."

Glory is the expression or the revealing of something that illicits your praise. The perfect mixture of sugar and cinnamon, the lightly browned crust, the weaved pattern of dough on top – they all affect your senses and you perceive it all to be "glorious."

Grace is the cause of it all and is the ultimate reason for what explains your joy. You know that you did not deserve to delight in such beauty and satisfaction. You did nothing to earn or obligate the pie-maker to bestow upon you his wealth of kindness. And there it is:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7).

Our Worship And Music

God’s people have been approaching the subject of corporate worship with an understandable kind of uncertainty since the first century; discussions on the format of worship have been in the church for a very long time. The reason for this is that the Bible simply does not give us an exhaustive prescriptive list of do’s and don’ts for corporate worship. There are the basics – the proclamation of God’s Word, the offering up of prayers, the giving of our offerings, the singing of the saints, the baptism of new believers, the eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table, and the loving church discipline of unrepentant saints. But even in these the Bible does not give us specific direction as to length of time, how often, in exactly what order and so forth. When it comes to style of music and worship, too often the gospel is scooted to the periphery of Sunday morning and replaced with entertainment and personal preferences. One way that we attempt to avoid most of the worship wars is to keep in mind that Jesus Christ and his gospel must be the one non-negotiable part of Sunday morning. We like what Bob Kauflin, author of Worship Matters had to say about this:

"Whenever I think I can’t worship God unless "X" is present, I’m making a profound statement. If "X" is anything other than Jesus Christ revealed in God’s Word and the presence of the Holy Spirit, I’ve moved into idolatrous territory. Idolatry is always evil, but the idols we pursue aren’t necessarily evil things. They are evil for us because we value them over God."

We agree. If worshiping God is our highest joy then we want to be on guard for idolatry on Sunday mornings. Therefore, we believe that an older generation should worship with the younger and the younger with the older. We believe that great old songs of the faith and Christ-exalting new songs, written because of new mercies known each morning, should be blended together in worship.

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