The following are the values that shape how we want to bring God glory and seek to accomplish our mission. Our values unpack the foundation of the church (the Bible), the mission of the church (disciples making disciples), and the motivation of the church (gospel heart).
WE OPEN OUR BIBLES
God loves his people, changes his people, communes with his people, and gives His life to his people by communicating to them. We open our Bibles because God’s Word is what grows God’s people. Our foundation is the Word of God and in everything we do we want His Word, His life, his reality informing and transforming everything we do.
At The Shore Church we believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God, useful for fully equipping, training, and reproving men and women of God (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible is totally true and trustworthy and thus it is be our final guide in matters of faith and of daily life; for when it speaks God speaks. Furthermore, the Bible is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” – John 17:17.
“And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.” – Acts 5:42
WE MAKE DISCIPLES
After Jesus rose from death and achieved salvation, He told the church, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. – Matthew 28:19
A disciple is someone who follows and believes in the teachings of another. It is a follower or a learner. It refers to someone who takes up the ways of someone else. Applied to Jesus, a disciple is someone who learns from, and lives like Jesus in every area of their lives, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Making disciples is about worshipping Jesus, serving Jesus, and being a witness of Jesus. When Jesus speaks, we listen and live it out.
What does this look like?
It look like helping one another develop a Christian mind and Christlike character in the context of biblical community. It looks like equipping people for ministry inside the church, raising people up, and sending people to make Jesus known outside. It looks like being a family who is committed to seeing each other become more like Jesus, forming deep friendships where we can be challenged by another and exhort each other onto love and good deeds.
WE LOVE EVERYONE
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:34-35
We are fully loved and delighted in by Jesus. We have a secure place in God’s heart and in his family and it is from this love that the church is called to love God and one another (1 John 2:7-11; 3:10-18, 23; 4:7-12, 20). Our heart is to be a church where its okay to be in the process, to be in the mess, but loving you means helping you not stay there. At the heart of the Gospel is the cross where Jesus put our lives and relationships back together by his grace.
What does this look like?
We love everyone by rejoicing with one another, celebrating the good and beautiful things that are happening in our lives, as well as weeping with one another, sharing one another’s sorrows and entering into each other’s pain. We love everyone means we welcome both believers and skeptics to bring their doubts and beliefs to the table.
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” – A.W. Tozer
At the core of what we believe is the gospel of Jesus Christ—the glorious truth that Jesus Christ died and was raised so that sinners would be reconciled to God. The gospel is our primary passion and the driving influence in our church’s preaching, worship, Community Groups, and mission.
Below is our Statement of Faith (borrowed from and condensed from the Gospel Coalition) which is rooted in the Scriptures and centred on the gospel.
(1) THE TRIUNE GODWe believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is worthy to receive all glory and adoration.
(2) REVELATIONWe believe that God has inspired the words of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. These writings alone constitute the Word of God, utterly authoritative, without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do.
(3) CREATION OF HUMANITYWe believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to significant engagement in family, church, and civic life.
(4) THE FALLWe believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness – for himself and all his progeny – by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being and condemned to death-apart from God’s own gracious intervention.
(5) THE PLAN OF GODWe believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end he foreknew them and chose them, all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.
(6) THE GOSPELWe believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ – God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news centers on the cross and resurrection of Christ.
(7) THE REDEMPTION OF CHRISTWe believe that, moved by love, the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified, rose on the third day and ascended into heaven as our representative and substitute. On the cross he canceled the debt of sin and reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death, defeated Satan, and brought everlasting life to all his people. By his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else.
(8) THE JUSTIFICATION OF SINNERSWe believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins. By his perfect obedience, he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God.
(9) THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRITWe believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ and, as “another Helper,” is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus.
(10) THE KINGDOM OF GODWe believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world nor become indistinguishable from it. Rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honour of the nations is to be offered up to the living God.
(11) GOD'S NEW PEOPLEWe believe that God’s new covenant people is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world.
(12) BAPTISM & THE LORD'S SUPPERWe believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. They are God’s pledge to us and our public submission to Christ.
(13) THE RESTORATION OF ALL THINGSWe believe in the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust-the unjust to eternal conscious punishment in hell and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by Christ, and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.
