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Genuine Community

north clackamas Bible community: an audio excerpt introducing Why we call ourselves a “Bible community” is followed by a further explanation of who we are as a Bible community and a statement of our faith.


Genuine
“Bible community”

Listen to a short excerpt from Mike’s recent sermon to the ncBc community. It will introduce you to why we’ve chosen to call ourselves a “Bible community.”

1Jn 2.24a (cf. vv. 24-25)

24 As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.

We emphasize “the Bible” because a true New Testament church entreats and encourages their entire congregation to continue to abide in the Word of God. They gather around the Bible to hear it, to read it, to study it, to learn it — to let God’s Word have it’s way in their hearts, forming Christ in them as individuals and as a body.

We stress “community” to differentiate ourselves from the normal understanding of a church as a place where individuals go, like consumers, to get ministered to in religious ways (baptisms, weddings, funerals). Referring to Jesus’ figure of the vine and the branches (Jn 15), John commands the body as a whole to fellowship with the Father and the Son and become a brotherhood of love — a genuine “Bible community.


Who we are as a church — as a Bible community

A voluntary association of adults, freely embracing a warm and active response to God, entering into a covenant to work regarding the will of God.

Holding to the orthodox teachings of historic Christianity regarding God, Christ, Sin and Salvation. The man Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and the only way by which humans can be saved; the gospel of Jesus Christ is each individual’s only hope.

Liberty: self-governing; self-supporting; self-propagating.

Our emphasis: cultivating the inner life … an Evangelical tradition (the state shall not establish a religion or prevent its free exercise, etc.; we are the kind of church that the United States 1st Amendment allows us to be).

Birthed by the Spirit of God, leading to a religion of the heart, we are seeking the will of God together. We have freely chosen to take our faith seriously: Jesus Christ is Lord … is our chosen Lord.


A statement of our faith

Our ‘Statement of Faith’ is a summary of both what we believe and what we believe in.

We believe in the Old and New Testaments as God-given scripture, infallible in their original documentation, and of supreme authority in the faith and practice of the church.

We believe in one God, eternally existent in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We believe in Jesus of Nazareth as the only-begotten Son of God, that He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, and that He lived a perfect and sinless life. We believe that He made atonement for the sins of the world through His death and that all those, and only those, who place their faith in Him have forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We believe that He bodily rose from the dead and will come again to rule the earth.

We believe that man was originally created in the image of God, that he rebelled against God and, as a result, every individual is born estranged from God and in need of the salvation which is afforded only in Jesus Christ.

We believe in the supernatural realities of Satan and other angelic beings that are engaged in spiritual warfare for the souls of men, and are intent on leading the world’s nations away from God.

We believe that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior through faith, by the grace of God, have been regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and have become children of God. We believe that this relationship is eternally secure.

We believe in the local church as a particular representation of the universal body of Christ. We believe that its membership is to be restricted to those who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, that its government is to be autonomous and independent, and that its mission is to bring the gospel to all peoples.

We believe in the personal, imminent, pretribulation return of our Lord Jesus Christ to gather His church. We also believe in His premillennial return, with His church, for the purposes of judgment, and a one-thousand-year earthly reign.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of all unbelieving mankind for the purpose of final judgment, at the end of the one-thousand-year reign of Christ. We believe that all those who have not placed their faith in Jesus Christ will suffer eternal torment and destruction in the lake of fire, or hell.