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STATEMENT OF FAITH

Our Church Covenant

Having been led, as we believe by the Spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we do now in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another, and one body in Christ.

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We engage, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to walk together in Christian love; to strive for the advancement of this church, in knowledge, holiness, and comfort; to promote its prosperity and spirituality; to sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines; to contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel through all nations.

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We also engage to maintain family and secret devotion; to religiously educate our children; to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances; to walk circumspectly in the world; to be just in our dealings, faithful in our engagements, and exemplary in our deportment; to avoid all tattling, backbiting, and excessive anger; to abstain from the sale and use of intoxicating drink as a beverage, and to be zealous in our efforts to advance the kingdom of our Saviour.

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We further engage to watch over one another in brotherly love; to remember each other in prayer; to aid each other in sickness and distress; to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech; to be slow to take offense, but always ready for reconciliation, and mindful of the rules of our Saviour, to secure it without delay. We more over engage that, when we remove from this place, we will as soon as possible unite with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God's Word.

The church covenant is a declaration, which some churches draw up and in which their duties as church members towards God and their fellow believers are outlined.

FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES

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  • A spiritual Church, Christ its founder, its only head and lawgiver.

  • Its ordinances, only two, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. They are typical and memorial, not saving.

  • Its officers, only two, bishops or pastors and deacons; they are servants of the church.

  • Its Government, a pure Democracy, and that executive only, never legislative.

  • Its laws and doctrines: The New Testament and that only.

  • Its members. Believers only, they saved by grace, not works, through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit.

  • Its requirements. Believers on entering the church to be baptized, that by immersion, then obedience and loyalty to all New Testament laws.

  • The various churches - separate and independent in their execution of laws and discipline and in their responsibilities to God - but cooperative in work.

  • Complete separation of Church and State.

  • Absolute Religious Liberty for all.

  • We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God; and the only rule of faith and practice.

  • We believe that the Scriptures teach that there is but one living and true God; and that there are three persons in this one God - the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit; and this Triune God is the only object of religious worship and adoration, and that all worship paid anything less in the name of God is idolatry and abomination in His sight.

  • We believe that God created man good and happy; that he sinned and fell from that condition; that by the fall he lost his original righteousness and became sinful and depraved; and as a natural consequence, that his posterity by ordinary generations are involved in all the consequences of his fall.

  • We believe that man, by nature, has no power to recover himself from his lost and ruined condition and, unless God Himself had provided a way of salvation, would have been ruined and miserable forever, because all have sinned.

  • We believe that the salvation of sinners is wholly by grace, through the mediatorial office of the Son of God , who took upon Himself our nature, yet without sin, honored law by His personal obedience and made atonement for our sins by His death; being risen from the dead, is now enthroned in heaven, and uniting in His wonderful person the tenderest sympathies with divine perfection, in every way qualified to be a suitable, compassionate, and all-sufficient Savior.

  • We believe that fallen man has nothing, and can do nothing, of himself, to recommend him to the favorable notice of the Divine Being, and that all his hopes of pardon, justification, redemption, and sanctification are derived alone from the merits of Christ.

  • We believe that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, is the only Mediator between God and man; that He first became our surety and in the fullness of time our sacrifice, and that the efficacious plea He makes before the throne in our behalf is built upon His own all-adorning sacrifice.

  • We believe the Holy Spirit - the third person in the Trinity is the great agent in convincing man of his lost and condemned condition, and in making the Gospel plain and acceptable.

  • We believe that all who are sanctified by the Spirit are freely justified by the righteousness of Christ, which comes to all that believe.

  • We believe that all who are called to be saints through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth shall never finally be lost.

  • We believe that Christian churches are to be formed of believers in Christ who give evidence of a change of heart, and have been properly baptized.

  • We believe that he government of the church is not left in the hands of any one man, or number of men, distinct from the body, but that it is left with the whole church.

  • We believe that the first day of the week, called the Lord's Day, is sanctified or set apart for the public worship of God, and that it is the duty of Christians to abstain from all unnecessary visiting, trifling conversation, and labor, except so much as is devoted to works of necessity and mercy

  • We believe that God has appointed the preaching of the Gospel for the edification of His church and the advancement of His kingdom; that it is the duty of church members to contribute to the support of the ministry as God in His providence may give them ability.

  • We believe that God calls men, by His Spirit, to preach the Gospel, and that it is the duty of the individual thus called to study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

  • We believe that Jesus Christ has appointed two positive institutions or ordinances to be observed in His church - baptism and the Lord's Supper; that baptism is immersion in water, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and believers only are capable of rightfully receiving the ordinances, that baptism precedes the Lord's Supper and none but ordained ministers have any right to administer them.

  • We believe that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust; that the just will rise to everlasting life and the unjust to everlasting shame and contempt .

  • We believe that the Gospel with all its obligations, privileges, and blessings, has been committed to the church of whom it is especially enjoined to make known to every creature while a risen and ascended Savior pledges His presence to the end of the world.

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