Christ centered/Gospel centered
We are seeking the glory of the Father in the Gospel of the Son by the power of the Spirit. All we do is for the glory of God. Everything in the life of the church flows out of the gospel.
The preaching and teaching of the church intentionally focuses on Christ’s death and resurrection as the culmination of God’s plan of redemption, and the highest revelation of his glory.
We recognize that everything we do for God only flows out of what he has done for us in Christ Jesus.
We observe the Lord’s Supper weekly to help maintain a Christ centered aim.
This aspect of the vision drives all the rest.
Holy Spirit powered
Jesus told his disciples that when the Spirit came, they would be empowered to be his witnesses. Our mission can only be carried out in the power of the Spirit.
In Romans 8, Paul says we can only keep the righteous requirement of the law by the Holy Spirit. If we want to be pleasing to God, we must walk according to the Spirit.
Jesus told the woman at the well that God is looking for those who will worship him in Spirit and in truth. The kind of worship God wants from us must be done in the Spirit. The Bible explains worship as a gathered activity of God’s people as well as our whole lives given to him as a living sacrifice.
In other words, all that we do as a church must be done in reliance on the Holy Spirit. We want to maintain this awareness and seek the power of God in his Spirit, abounding in the fruit of the Spirit and earnestly desiring all his gifts.
Mission driven
We are devoted to Christ’s commission of discipling Durango and the nations through evangelism and church planting.
Proclamation of the word of the gospel is the primary form of evangelism; without it, we are not evangelizing. The commission is for the whole church, and we each play a part in it from hospitality to proclamation to teaching everyone to observe everything Jesus commanded.
The commission begins with evangelism and baptism, and proceeds to teaching the nations to observe everything Jesus commanded. Evangelism is just the beginning, and we are all discipling others in some direction every day with our words and our lives, beginning at home and radiating out to our neighborhoods, vocations, church, and community.
Every-member ministry
Every member of the body of Christ is gifted and empowered for ministry by the Holy Spirit.
We want to be a people who speak the truth in love to one another, meet one another’s needs, and look beyond our congregation for ways to love our neighbors in word and deed. The leaders are given to equip the saints to do these works of ministry.
Biblical
We seek in all things to conform our church and our lives to the revelation of God in all the scriptures.
Because we believe that faith comes from hearing the word of God, the backbone of our preaching and teaching ministry is biblical exposition that draws out and applies the meaning of the scriptures: both Old and New Testaments.
We strive for holiness in all that we do corporately and individually.
We reject worldly philosophies that blow people back and forth, and diligently work to view all of life through a robustly Christian worldview. We are committed not to latch onto the latest winds of doctrine, but to hold fast to the faith once for all delivered to us as we constantly grow in our understanding of its riches. Thus we reject things like postmodernism, feminism, wokeness, etc.
We are seeking to train our children in this by devoting ourselves to providing them with a robust Christian education.
Reformed Baptist
We give thanks for our Reformed and baptistic heritage, delighting in our traditions while keeping them in subjection to God’s Word. Our Reformed tradition informs not only our entire soteriology, but also our theology and worship more broadly. Our worship is robust, Spirit filled, and liturgical.
Our baptist heritage informs our ecclesiology and our hermeneutics. We find progressive covenantalism to be the most biblical lens through which to read the covenants, and we believe the covenant signs should follow the reality of covenant union with Christ and his church, which is by faith alone. We believe the elders of the local church are the sufficient and biblical authority for the local church under Christ and his word, and we believe like-minded local churches should partner together for wisdom and mission whenever possible.
Ecclesiologically Minded
The church is governed by qualified men holding the offices of elder and deacon, assessed carefully according to the biblical requirements for these leaders.
We structure our church according to biblical ecclesiology with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper expressing church membership and loving discipline.
Devoted to Prayer
We do not have, because we do not ask. What Father if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone? The fields are ripe for harvest, we are to pray for God to send out workers into the harvest. We cannot do any of the work God has called us to in our own strength. We must therefore depend on God, and earnestly seek him in corporate and private prayer.
Robust
We seek to follow God and minister to others as whole people. This means worshiping God, body and soul, with the thoughts, affections, and will. This also means seeing people created as ensouled bodies: caring for their spiritual and physical needs.
United
Christians are saved into a body of believers, a community of worshipers seeking to live life the way God intended it. The church is not a place where individuals meet and then go on their way, nor is it a cultural affinity group. The church is a new humanity, a family, a nation dispersed across the world, recreated in Christ Jesus.
We are involved in each others’ lives and in each others’ homes. We seek to meet each others’ needs so that there is not a needy person among us. We want the world to know we are Christians by the love we have for each other.
Christ unites all kinds of people together, and we rejoice in the multi-generational nature of God’s people. Thus we resist modern trends of breaking people up into various identity groups, and seek to keep families together in worship and church activities.
Culturally engaged and optimistic
We seek to engage and bring light to the culture of our city rather than retreating from it (in the world but not of the world.)
We seek to do this in many ways, including things like hosting public conferences and festivals, engaging in the arts, working for the good of the city in our jobs, caring for the needy (orphans and widows), etc.
We believe that the kingdom of God will grow from the smallest seed to the largest tree in the garden. We believe that there will be no end to the increase of Jesus’ government and of his peace. We are trying to do our part in accomplishing the mission Jesus gave to his church in his strength by his grace.
