It would be great to be able to say “we are Christians” and that is all that needs to be said. The problem is there are so many types of churches and groups, all claiming the name “Christian”, that the word has come to mean both nothing and everything. In fact there are all sorts of words which evoke all sorts of images and associations in the mind – Catholic – Protestant – Evangelical – Fundamentalist – Orthodox. Our hope is to show you that we are simply Christians in the same way that the very first Christians were who heard the voice of Jesus Christ saying “Follow me” (Matt 4:19). Here is a simple definition (If you want a more detailed description of our belief and practice follow the link to our Constitution)

We are Christians

The first and most important description is to say that we are Christians. That is, we are followers of Jesus Christ; we worship him as God, obey him as King and follow his example of life when he walked this world as the man/God, as recorded in all four gospels of the bible. We unashamedly confess our Love and devotion to him as a personal being that is alive. The very first followers were called Christians in Antioch, Ancient Syria (Acts 11:26). We believe that when Jesus came into this world he was on a mission – he came to “save his people from their sins”. He did this by dying in their place, taking the punishment we deserve upon himself and now stands as the only bridge (mediator) between ourselves and God.

We are Bible Christians

This is where we begin – we believe the bible to be the very word of God to mankind. It really is all that God needs to say to us. The bible doesn’t pretend to be a book of science, philosophy or psychology yet, because it is the word of God, whatever it does speak about it speaks with final authority in all matters it touches on. The bible is God’s book of salvation, that is, we believe the bible to be one book – there is an underlying theme (meta-narrative) running throughout. In it we discover who God is, who we are and how this great and wonderful God can accept us. As a result we run against much modern thought which says that everything is relative, we believe that there is such a thing as final and absolute truth and it is in the Bible.

We are Evangelical Christians

The underlying theme of the bible, mentioned above, is summed up in a single word – salvation. The word “evangelical” comes from the Greek word - Euangelion which means gospel. Throughout the New Testament - gospel  - is constantly used as a summary word for this great theme. The gospel then is God’s message to mankind brought to us through the bible; it teaches about how we can become acceptable to God and therefore, reconciled to him with Jesus Christ being the only way to him. Please go to the resources page and follow the link for “Two Ways to Live” to find a fuller explanation of this.