ALCOHOL, MARIJUANA, AND WISE CONSUMPTION OF FOODS
Alcohol, in and of itself, is not evil or forbidden in Scripture. Jesus Himself drank wine and was even mistaken for a drunkard because of this. We are given clear warnings concerning any amount of alcohol that changes our cognitive capabilities, impacts our judgment, or alters our behavior. Drunkenness is clearly forbidden. Since today’s modern fermentation methods often result in higher levels of alcohol than could ever have been achieved in biblical times, we must be wise and prayerful with alcohol.
Food, alcohol, or whatever we consume is to be for God’s glory and our enjoyment, not for self- medication. Believers who feel it is better not to drink any alcohol have the freedom to abstain. Those who choose to drink alcoholic beverages must always do so wisely and thoughtfully so that they do not harm others, their own testimonies, or themselves.
Marijuana, unless medically prescribed, is prohibited by law in many states, and we are to obey our God-given authorities. Where marijuana use is legal, the Bible prohibits intoxication. We are told that all food, plants, and herbs are for our benefit to digest, but we are never told that we can transform those into new substances that we smoke, snort, or inject into our veins. Since marijuana makes a person high or intoxicated, then there is no way to smoke it and obey God’s commands against drunkenness. If a person has some tolerance to marijuana, the fact that marijuana negatively influences the clarity of the mind and can impact the health of the body prohibits us from consuming it for God’s glory and our good.
Lastly, food can also be misused. We are to enjoy all that God gives us but also eat in a way that honors and strengthens the body God gave us and brings God glory. Self-medicating with food can be as problematic and sinful as any drug.
GAMBLING
Scripture endorses three ways to obtain goods or money: working, obtaining goods through exchange, and receiving gifts or inheritance. Gambling tends to cultivate a materialistic view of life and often takes from those who cannot afford to lose their monies or goods. Gambling also cultivates winners and losers through games of chance. For someone to truly succeed in gambling, someone else must lose their money or goods. None of these can reflect the Great Commandment or Great Commission. There could be certain types of gambling in which one does not have the motivation to take from others and win by seeing others lose (investments, the stock market, penny poker, and games of fun), but one must have the motivation to love his neighbor, do so in good conscience, and not cause others to stumble.
PHYSICAL HEALING: PRAYER AND MEDICATION
God still performs miraculous works today. Every time an individual is saved from his or her sin nature and is turned into a redeemed follower who loves God, a miracle has transpired. We are to pray for physical healing and rescue and trust God with His answer in how He heals and rescues. Although God still physically heals and rescues today, He may choose not to do so when He will get greater glory in not doing so. A Christian’s use of prescription drugs is between the Christian and the Lord and is not forbidden in Scripture. The believer should, however, care for his or her body as being the temple of the Holy Spirit and be careful that no prescription drug controls his or her life if at all possible.
THE PROCESS OF CHRIST-LIKENESS AND SPIRITUAL MATURITY
Mature disciples go, grow, and glorify God through their relationship with Jesus Christ. A person in a reconciled relationship with Christ will see growth in personal Christ-likeness over time and will experience a more mature and enjoyable relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ because we are already “complete in Christ.” Growing Christlike over time with God’s word, by His Spirit, and walking in community with other believers is to be a way of life for every follower of Christ. Our leaders are committed to multiplying the godly characteristics of God’s work in their lives into others. This multiplication of ministry is key to the healthy growth of the church. Healthy disciples reproduce healthy disciples. All disciples of Jesus Christ should serve others and reproduce healthy disciple makers in the local church rather than just the “professional pastors” bearing total responsibility to care for, disciple, and serve the congregation.
We teach the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments to be the full record of God’s self-disclosure to humanity. Different men, while writing according to their own styles and personalities, were supernaturally moved along by the Holy Spirit to record God’s very words. We trust in the verbal, complete inspiration of the Scriptures and that they contain all the words of God that we need in order to love, enjoy, trust, and obey Him. The Scriptures are without error in their original writings, completely dependable in their instruction, eternal in duration, the final authority and the standard for Christian faith and daily practice, and sufficient for counsel in every spiritual and relational issue of life. We teach the Bible versions which translate God’s Word most literally into modern English should be preferred. It is in Scripture that we see Jesus and gain His joy for daily living.
THE TRIUNE GOD
We teach there is one living and true God, eternally existing in perfect unity as three equally and fully divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each Person of the Godhead, while fulfilling distinct but complementary roles in redemptive history, has precisely the same nature, attributes, and being, and is equally worthy of the same glory and honor and obedience.
God the Father
We teach God the Father created all things in six literal days for His glory according to His will, through His Son Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. God upholds all things by the Word of His power, exercising sovereign authority over all creation, including the restoration of those who have rebelled against Him.
God the Son
We teach that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, moved by love in accordance with the will of the Father, took on human flesh. Conceived through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the virgin Mary. He, being fully God and fully man (John 14:8-9), lived a sinless life and sacrificially shed His blood and died on the cross in our place, accomplishing redemption for all who place their faith in Him. He arose visibly and bodily from the dead three days later and ascended into heaven, where, at the Father’s right hand, He is now Head of His Body the Church, the only Savior and Mediator between God and man, and will return to earth in power and glory to complete His redemptive mission.
God the Spirit
We teach the Holy Spirit, in all that He does, glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ during this age. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He draws those who are in rebellion toward Him to repentance and faith, and at salvation imparts new spiritual life to the believer, bringing that person into a reconciled relationship with Jesus Christ and the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit sanctifies, seals, satisfies, guides, instructs, comforts, equips, empowers, permanently indwells at salvation, and bestows spiritual gifts to the believer for Christ-like living and service.
HUMANITY
We teach God created mankind—male and female—in His own image and likeness, free of sin, to glorify and enjoy Him. Adam and Eve were given the privilege to oversee all of God’s creation under His guidance and care. Tempted by Satan, but in the sovereign plan of God, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, bringing sin, death, and a death sentence to all people. All human beings are totally corrupt by nature and by choice. Alienated from God without defense or excuse and subject to God’s righteous justice, all of humanity is in desperate need of the Savior.
SALVATION
We teach the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures as the substitutionary atonement in our place and that salvation is found in none other than Jesus Christ. Before Creation, God chose His people and granted each one unearned grace solely based on His good pleasure. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was the sole and complete payment for sin, fully satisfying God’s righteous justice, for each person that turns from sin in repentance and places his or her faith in Christ alone by grace
alone. If we go to heaven, it is because of God’s unmerited grace through Jesus Christ, and if we are eternally separated from Him, it is because of our own rebellion. We hold these two truths with humility and awe. At salvation, each person is made a new creation by the Holy Spirit, declared righteous before God, and adopted as a child of God forever. Genuine faith continues in obedience and love for Jesus Christ with a life eager to glorify God and persevere to the end.
THE CHURCH
We teach that upon placing one’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the believer is made part of the Body of Christ, the one universal Church, of which Jesus Christ is the Head. The Scriptures command believers to gather locally in order to devote themselves to worship, prayer, teaching of the Word, encouragement and partnership, the ordinances of baptism and communion, service to the local body through the development and use of talents and spiritual gifts, and outreach to the world to make
disciples.
Wherever God’s people meet regularly in obedience to this command, there is the local expression of the Church under the watchful care of a plurality of elders. A church’s members are to work together in love and unity, intent on the ultimate purpose of glorifying Christ and proclaiming His Good News to all the world.
BAPTISM AND COMMUNION
Baptism and communion are the two ordinances required in the church.
We teach Christian baptism by immersion in water is a public identification with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Although baptism is not required for salvation, it is commanded of all believers, declares one’s allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Savior, and is for believers only in order to declare that we are saved by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Scripture shows that a person was baptized after receiving forgiveness of sin through trusting in God’s grace through Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Baptism by immersion is a symbol of our death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life that happens when we become new creations in Christ.
Communion is the remembrance by believers of Christ’s death for us, and a reminder—through the bread and the juice—of the Savior’s broken body and shed blood for us. We are reminding ourselves that Jesus satisfies as the Bread of Life when everything else leaves us unfulfilled and empty. Communion is to be a time of self-examination and also a time of celebration of who we are in Jesus Christ. We encourage believers to take communion in their homes and small groups as a way of life as God leads.
MISSIONS
Every believer has the calling and privilege to glorify God by being active participants in the Great Commission call of Jesus Christ; that is, to go and make disciples of our family, neighbors, and all nations. The primary focus and priority of this call is centered on establishing and strengthening disciple makers who make other disciple makers who then strengthen and plant churches for future generations and God’s glory.
CHURCH PARTNERSHIPS
The body of Christ exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commandment and the Great commission. The Great Commission is fulfilled as disciples of Jesus Christ grow in relational and spiritual depth with Him and His people. God is glorified as we enjoy and manifest His presence, live for His glory, and disciple others who will, in turn, then disciple others. In seeking to fulfill the church's purpose by the empowerment of God's Spirit, we recognize the extraordinary value in multiplying the reach of God's ministry by cooperating with existing, like-minded churches and organizations, walking with one another in order to foster relationships that encourage, support, lovingly admonish, and prayerfully strengthen fellow disciple makers.
COUNSELING PHILOSOPHY
The Lord changes lives and accomplishes His purposes directly through reading and applying the Scriptures, meditating on the truths of the Scriptures, prayer and the influence of the Holy Spirit that leads to obedience to Jesus. The Lord uses those who proclaim His Word as they encourage, exhort, admonish, strengthen, and console others towards Christ-likeness. God needs no new or unique insight into the human condition in order to change lives. God alone through His Spirit, Word, and people provides sufficient relationships, truth, insight, empowerment, and wisdom that transforms lives. Only the God of the Scriptures can offer real solutions that lead to godliness and a successful, joyful life.
God has given the church everything we need for life and godliness. He changes all of us as we trust Him and walk together in obedience to the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve, there are medical, genetic, and cognitive issues that need medical and holistic care. We will cooperate with any qualified medical professional to get an individual proper medical care. We also teach holistic care of the human body which includes proper eating, exercise and rest.
SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE
All human life is sacred and created by God in His image. Because our Creator created us for His glory, human life is of immeasurable worth in all its dimensions, including pre-born babies, the aged, the physically or mentally challenged, and every other stage or condition from conception through natural death. We are called to defend, protect, and value all human life.
PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE
God commands, “You must not murder.” Jesus also commands us, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Allowing someone to naturally die by withholding treatment(s) and/or life support adheres to these two commands, because the intention is to care for a person in the best and most humane way possible, rather than to cause someone’s death.
Permitting someone to die involves intention and benevolent care and it allows God-given timing to run its course. This is the moral distinction between physician-assisted suicide and allowing someone to die. It is in this space of God-given timing of suffering and eventually death that we can be part of God’s plan to mature us, our families, and those watching in deeper awareness and dependence upon God: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)