Mission & Beliefs
Our Mission
We are definitely on a mission. And it is not just any mission. We feel that we are called to be a community of faith together in which God's Truth is proclaimed by what we preach and manifested by how we live our lives in worship and in obedience to the Gospel. We do this so that persons might be drawn to the grandeur, power and wonder of God in Jesus Christ. To accomplish this we are committed to five essential practices.
- Gathering for proclamation regularly and consistently to hear God's Word preached and taught with faithful biblical interpretation, deep theological insight, and engaging application to our lives.
- Participating in corporate worship of God that is vibrant and done with excellence in order to give praise to the Triune God, celebrate the grace and mercy we have received in Jesus Christ, and bear witness to the world around us.
- Nurturing and challenging one another to follow Jesus by caring for each other in times of crisis, temptation, doubt and joy through a system of small and intentional caring groups and through studying God's word together.
- Practicing concrete, loving interest in persons who are in our immediate neighborhoods and the greater Jackson area by programs of outreach that provide ministries of compassion to those in need, by invitations to all persons regardless of race or socioeconomic status to be a part of our fellowship, by ministries to persons of all ages that give them the opportunity to be followers of Jesus and believe the Gospel deeply.
- Supporting the spread of the Gospel and growth of Christ's church through our commitment to Wesley Biblical Seminary to be part of the training of missionaries and ministers, through support of specific missionary and Christian service endeavors around the world and in Jackson, and through our practice of life-style, invitational evangelism in our communities.
WE BELIEVE
- The self-revealing God has made himself known through his mighty acts of salvation and providence in the history of Israel and through Jesus Christ. The Holy Bible is the true and faithful testimony to these historical acts and is the ultimate source of theological and moral authority in the church.
- The nature of the self-revealing God is the Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Faith in the triune God rests upon the revelation and teaching of Jesus Christ and is guided by the ancient faith of the Church as expressed in the ancient councils.
- The love of the self-revealing God redeems us through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who is God made Man and the only one through whom humanity can know God rightly and be saved from sin. Jesus alone is the only savior of the world, because he alone is the incarnation of God - fully God and fully human. He was born through a miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and lived a sinless life before freely choosing to give his life for the sins of the whole world. Rising bodily from the grave, he overcame death making possible a new creation, ascended into heaven, to be enthroned at God's right hand as our Intercessor.
- The presence of the self-revealing God in the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us when we repent, believe and receive Christ as Lord. By the Holy Spirit, the truth of Christ, his faithfulness to God and his victory over death are applied to humanity and to our salvation.
- The image of the self-revealing God is the unique identifying mark of our human nature, for humanity was created by a special act in God's work of creation by God's will to make us in his image and likeness. However, through human unwillingness to trust in God's goodness and our calamitous willful disobedience against God, we became deeply fallen and hopelessly lost apart from God's redeeming grace.
- The response to the self-revealing God and his offer of grace and salvation is a necessity for all who will be saved and is a possibility for each fallen person who bears the image of God through God's love and enabling grace.
- The full salvation of the self-revealing God is more than forgiveness of our sins. It is the transformation of our lives into the image of Jesus Christ. God desires to fill us with the Holy Spirit, and this fullness of the Spirit comes to us as a second act of God's saving grace and occurs in us sometime after we have been born again by faith. The fullness of the Holy Spirit frees us from the dominating power of sinful desire, purifies our hearts to love God whole-heartedly, empowers us to grow more deeply and consistently in grace and be more fruitful and effective in our service to God.
- The people of the self-revealing God are the Church - the living body of Christ - constituted by all who are united to Him by faith as members of his body. In all Christian traditions there are true disciples of Jesus. The Church is called upon to worship God, obey Christ, love one another, proclaim the Gospel and witness to God's justice, mercy and truth in the political, social, and economic needs of persons and cultures.
- The return of the self-revealing God will usher in His Kingdom upon the earth in full righteousness and salvation at the end of this Age when Jesus Christ will return to renew all of Creation, gather His Church, judge the world and to rule in righteousness.
- The blessing and judgment of the self-revealing God establishes finally and forever the blessedness of all who die in Christ and the everlasting pain and loss of all others. Yet, we affirm that it is God's desire that all should come to faith and be saved.
