The good news

What we believe and proclaim is not advice for a better way to live. Nor is it instruction on how to escape from this world. It is instead good news about something that has happened to which we are invited to respond.

It seems obvious that the world is a broken, hurting place, where many things are out of whack, including people. But how did things get this way?

God made the world and entrusted it to humanity to steward. God intended humans and all of creation to thrive and flourish in wholeness and peace and in relationship with him.

Sadly, we humans chose (and continue to choose) to try to run things on our own, breaking from God’s intent. As a result, our relationships were damaged and distorted in four directions: our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the creation. This is what is meant by the word sin.

God loved his creation too much to abandon it to this brokenness. Throughout history, God has been working to address the situation of sin and restore the wholeness he intended for his creation. About four thousand years ago, God chose a family to join in his renewing work. That family would become the people of Israel. Sadly, that people too, though intended to participate in the healing of God’s world, was marred by sin. But God, through his prophets, promised that he would send a king, arising from the people of Israel, who would be faithful where all before had failed, and who would be the way that God would finally defeat sin and heal the broken relationships in all directions.

When the time was right, God came himself to his people in the person of Jesus, who was the promised king, genuinely human yet also the embodiment of Israel’s God. Jesus went about healing, teaching, and proclaiming that God’s new world was arriving. He attracted the anger of the political and religious rulers of the time, who conspired against him.

At their hands, Jesus was put to death like a common criminal, an unjust and painful death. But in his death, Jesus took on all the sin and brokenness of the world, fully experiencing the weight and penalty of it on behalf of all of humanity.

And three days after Jesus’s death, God raised him again to a new kind of life, as the forerunner of the world to come. Jesus thus defeated sin and death and was vindicated as the ruler of the cosmos through whom all things would be renewed.

Jesus now invites us to enter into his story, join the community of his people, receive forgiveness, and experience healing of our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and with all of creation. It is in him we have life, and we are called to invite others into that life, to work with him to extend that same life, healing, and reconciliation to humanity and the whole creation. This is our sometimes painful, but always joyful, task as we look forward to the day when Jesus will return to fully establish his rule, where humanity and creation will finally be fully restored to the wholeness, justice, beauty, and goodness which God intended.

This is the good news of Jesus the King, which we proclaim in word and deed.

Statement of faith

This is a summary of the core beliefs of our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

There is one God, who is infinitely perfect, existing eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is the true God and the true man. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He died upon the cross, the Just for the unjust, as a substitutionary sacrifice, and all who believe in him are justified on the ground of his shed blood. He arose from the dead according to the Scriptures. He is now at the right hand of the Father on high as our great High Priest. He will come again to establish his kingdom, righteousness and peace.

The Holy Spirit is a divine person, sent to dwell, guide, teach, empower the believer, and convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement.

The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of his will for the salvation of men. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice.

Humans were originally created in the image and likeness of God. They fell through disobedience, incurring thereby both physical and spiritual death. Everyone is born with a sinful nature, is separated from the life of God, and can be saved only through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The portion of the unrepentant and unbelieving is existence forever in conscious torment; and that of the believer, in everlasting joy and bliss.

Salvation has been provided through Jesus Christ for everyone; and those who repent and believe in him are born again of the Holy Spirit, receive the gift of eternal life, and become the children of God.

It is the will of God that each believer should be filled with the Holy Spirit and be sanctified wholly, being separated from sin and the world and fully dedicated to the will of God, thereby receiving power for holy living and effective service. This is both a crisis and a progressive experience wrought in the life of the believer subsequent to conversion.

Provision is made in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ for the healing of the mortal body. Prayer for the sick and anointing with oil are taught in the Scriptures and are privileges for the Church in this present age.

The Church consists of all those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, are redeemed through his blood, and are born again of the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Head of the Body, the Church, which has been commissioned by him to go into all the world as a witness, preaching the gospel to all nations. The local church is a body of believers in Christ who are joined together for the worship of God, for edification through the Word of God, for prayer, fellowship, the proclamation of the gospel, and observance of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

There shall be a bodily resurrection of the just and of the unjust; for the former, a resurrection unto life; for the latter, a resurrection unto judgment.

The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent and will be personal, visible, and premillenial. This is the believer’s blessed hope and is a vital truth which is an incentive to holy living and faithful service.