We believe and teach the Bible as it has been understood by Christians for centuries. Our beliefs can be summarized in four words: orthodox, Protestant, evangelical, and Wesleyan.

We are orthodox, which means that we are Bible-believing Christians who affirm historic Christian teaching, including on matters of gender and sexuality. Our faith is summarized in the ecumenical creeds: Apostles‘, Nicene, and Athanasian.

We are Protestant, not Roman Catholic, which means that we submit to God’s Word in Holy Scripture as our final rule of faith and practice, and uphold the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

We are evangelical, which means that we emphasize the necessity of being born again, having a personal relationship with God, and putting our faith into practice through good works and holy living.

We are Wesleyan/Methodist, which means that our roots run back to John Wesley and the Anglican Church with its 39 Articles of Religion, abridged by Wesley in the 25 Articles of Religion. While Methodists seek to be “mere Christians,” simply following the method laid out in Scripture for pursuing God and holiness, the great Methodist theologian William Burt Pope identified several distinctive emphases of Methodist doctrine, including:

• the love of God;
• the reconciliation of the whole world to God through the substitutionary atonement of Christ;
• the outpouring of God’s free grace upon the entire human race through the Holy Spirit;
• the possibility of all being saved;
• the personal witness of the Holy Spirit in the heart of believers;
• the importance of the sacraments as instruments by which God administers his grace;
• the need for believers to persevere in faith and holiness;
• and the entireness of Christian sanctification as the most glorious privilege of the life of faith upon earth.

For more on what we believe and teach, see our church’s catechism (a summary of the Christian faith in Q&A format).