We are a Bible-believing Church
We believe the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, is the written Word of God. God has spoken, and he has spoken clearly, in our own language. And he tells us in plain words what we need to hear, both about ourselves and about him. The central message of the Bible is the good news about what God has done through Jesus Christ.
We are a Gospel-believing Church
The Bible tells us good news about a God who humbled himself to come and save sinners out of his pure and free grace. God became a man in Jesus Christ, obeyed the law we failed to obey, bore the punishment we deserved, and rose again from the dead to prove that his sacrifice was sufficient and to give new spiritual life to all who would repent of their sins and put their trust in him. When you trust Christ to be your Savior and Lord, his death on the Cross is counted as your punishment, and his perfect obedience is counted as yours. By this transaction, your sins are forgiven, you are adopted as a child of God, and made an heir of eternal life. At the same time, you are given the Holy Spirit, who changes the very core of your being to produce new desires in you to love the Lord and your neighbor. He gradually changes you from a rebel sinner to a loving child of God. And when Christ returns, he will judge the world, raise the dead, cast those who reject him into eternal judgment, and reward all his people with resurrection life in the new creation with no more sin, sorrow, or death, only his abundant love and blessing forever.
We are a Worshiping Church
God is holy, perfect, all-powerful righteous, loving, and gracious. God granted sinners like us undeserved mercy, so we give him thanks and praise. We adore him for who he is and what he has done. The Bible says the one true God exists in three persons, often called the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God the Father planned our salvation and sent his only begotten Son to be our Savior. God the Son, Jesus Christ, volunteered to be our substitute and purchase our salvation. God the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son, to accomplish everything the Father planned for us, giving us every spiritual blessing in Christ secured for us through his cross and resurrection. Our God is so great, and we expect him to do marvelous and surprising things in our lives.
We are a Reformed Church
As you get to know us, you’ll notice we have some nicknames related to our historic tradition. We are “Evangelical”, because we bear the good news of the gospel and believe the gospel is vital to our lives and worship. We come to hear the gospel every week, and we believe that God has called us into a renewed fellowship with him through faith in Christ. The good news is that through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we have peace with God and are placed in right standing with God so that we may have communion with him and with one another. We are “Orthodox” because the truth is important and can be known. We are “Presbyterian” because our church is governed by multiple elders elected by the people instead of a single pastor or bishop. We are “Protestant” because we testify to the truth that salvation is granted by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, and because we believe the Bible is the final authority for all our beliefs and practices. But our most common nickname is “Reformed.” We continue within the tradition reaching back to the early Church and recovered in the Protestant Reformation. We believe all traditions and teachings must be taught by or clearly built on Scripture. We have specific convictions about salvation and worship. We are saved through God’s amazing grace alone, not on the basis of our performance. We cannot earn or keep this salvation on our own. Christ satisfied all the requirements in our place and gave us the Holy Spirit to preserve us to the end. And finally, we only worship God in ways the Bible commands. Standing in the tradition of the Church throughout history, we are also known as being “Confessional” because we confess our faith with the saints of old and new using historic Creeds and Confessions. You will find our doctrinal beliefs summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
How to Learn More
To learn about what we believe, please visit OPC-Confession and Catechisms
