Our Mission Statement Explained
By God’s grace we are becoming a family of faith devoted to our Lord Jesus Christ, His Word, His ordinances, and one another as we seek to accomplish the shared mission of making Him known among the nations (read more below)!
By God’s grace, we are becoming a family of faith…
The Bible teaches that the church is made up of those who have believed in Jesus, repented of their sins, and been baptized; such believing individuals are counted among the family of Abraham. We are the children of God, whom we (by His grace) call Father, and the New Testament refers to those around us who likewise share our faith “brothers and sisters.” We hope and pray that our church increasingly becomes and feels like what it is in reality: a faith family that exists only because of God’s grace!
…devoted to our Lord Jesus Christ…
We long to be increasingly devoted to God. We serve a Triune God who has worked of His own divine grace to bring salvation to wicked, wayward men and women. God sent Jesus to be Lord and Savior; Jesus willingly came and bore the wrath of God the Father in place of sinful man and died on the cross for God’s glory and for our salvation; and the Spirit applies that salvation to the hearts of believers. We believe that the worship and adoration of Jesus, our King and Savior, is wholly appropriate and God-glorifying. We are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ; He is the Head, and we devote ourselves to Him. We want to devote our whole selves–sleeping, waking, working, playing, resting, serving, giving, time, energy, body, soul, calendar, homes, families, churches, bank accounts–to our Lord Jesus Christ. We are seeking whole-hearted devotion in all of life!
…to His Word…
Our Lord Jesus, the King, rules His people by His Word. He comes to have preeminence in His church as His Word is read, expounded, and applied to His people. Part of our devotion to Christ is to be a people who submit our thoughts, feelings, opinions, desires, beliefs, and actions to His Word. We hope to give ourselves wholly to glad-hearted obedience to the infallible, inerrant, and Spirit-inspired Word of God! Jesus, in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), tells the disciples that one way in which they are to make disciples is “teaching all that [He] has commanded [them].” In order to do this, we need to understand the Bible as well as possible; this means that context will matter greatly. The Holy Spirit gave us the Scriptures in a particular order, syntax, and grammar. Therefore, we are convinced that the best way to study a particular book of the Bible is in sequential order, chapter-by-chapter, as we move through and understand each individual text in its context. Expository preaching is thus our main diet in our gatherings. We likewise want every ministry of our church to have at its heart a deeper understanding of His Word and a fuller obedience to it by the help of the Holy Spirit who inspired it!
…to His ordinances…
Jesus ordained two signs of the New Covenant and entrusted them to His church to be practiced until He returns to bring His Church to Himself! These ordinances (sometimes called “sacraments”) are two visual, tangible representations of the gospel message. These are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commands His disciples to make disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and by teaching them all He has commanded (see above). Baptism is part of the mission of the church, and as such is only to be practiced within the church and is to be guarded closely by the church. Likewise, the Lord’s Supper is only to be enjoyed by those who have repented and believed, as well as those who are walking in right fellowship with God’s people. The Lord’s Supper is likewise an ordinance to be guarded by the church and practiced only within the context of the gathered church (in Acts 2, the believers devote themselves ‘to the breaking of bread,’ which many believe is an allusion to the Lord’s Supper). Historically, also, the true church has been identified by two “marks”: (1) the right preaching of the gospel, and (2) the right administration of the ordinances. Therefore, we want to devote ourselves to Christ by rightly being devoted to the proper practice of His ordinances as far as we are able!
…and to one another…
There are over 50 “one another” commands in the New Testament which are implications of our faith in Christ and in His gospel. Because Jesus has died for us, we are to live for Him; this life is lived in the context of a community of real, flesh-and-blood people with real needs and desires. We are called to weep with one another, rejoice with one another, serve one another through love, outdo one another in showing honor, and teach and admonish one another, among many other things. We are commanded not to neglect the gathering (Heb. 10:24-25), and we see the early church regularly gathering and sacrificing for one another. In John 13:34-35, Jesus tells His disciples that outsiders will be able to distinguish them as His disciples because of their love for one another; in other words, their evangelistic witness in part depends on their love for one another. Because of all this (and much more), we want to be devoted to one another!
…as we seek to accomplish the shared mission of making Him known among the nations.
All of these devotions have a specific goal in mind. We are a people on a mission. We are servants of King Jesus, and we want to see His reign and rule extended to every tribe, tongue, and nation across the world, from Wardville to the farthest shoreline from us! God’s purpose has always been to bring the nations in (Genesis 12:1-3), and Jesus’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20; cf. Acts 1:8) is a command to seek the discipleship of all nations. We have strategic ways in which we go about this, but we want to be found faithfully striving to accomplish this mission (in the Spirit’s power, by God’s grace, carried along by our faith in God and His Word) both at home and abroad. We want to spend ourselves for the good of the lost in Wardville, in Wales, and in West Africa (and everywhere in between).