Visioning Update--Core Beliefs

Thank you to everyone who came to the Visioning Town Hall conversation Sunday evening. I was impressed by both the number of people who attended and also the good questions, interest, and commitment demonstrated by so many of of you. Thank you! As promised, here is the draft of the core beliefs that we discussed. I can't figure out how to link to a word document, so I've just pasted it here. Enjoy!

Core Beliefs

September 9, 2007 Draft

Genesis
God created the world and all that is in it. He created human beings to be in relationship with Him, but when we choose our own desires and exercise our own wills against God, we repeat the sin common to all humanity, alienating ourselves from God, damaging our relationship with one another, fragmenting our society, and abusing our world. Shame, guilt, selfishness, arrogance, greed, and cruelty degrade our lives. All creation suffers in our broken world.

Gospel
The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to restore us to full relationship with God. As the complete revelation and physical embodiment of God, Christ came to restore wholeness of body, mind, and spirit and to show us how to love as we were meant to love. When we confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, we experience reconciliation with God, forgiveness of our sins, fullness of life in this world, and hope for eternal life in the world to come.

Acts
We believe that a church is a local body of baptized believers whose commonality is their individual experience of Christ as Savior and whose unity is their voluntary association as a spiritual community committed to worship, evangelism, fellowship, study of the Bible, and service in Christ’s name. We desire to be worthy of the New Testament designation of the church as the “body of Christ”; thus, with Him as our Savior and example, and with the Holy Spirit as our empowering guide, we will strive to live as a community of faith, to embody the love of Christ in relationship with one another, to minister to the broken world, and to share the good news of Jesus with everyone who does not know him.

Reconciliation
We live with the assurance that God restores us to right relationship with himself through our faith in Jesus Christ. Having received this gift of salvation, we are called to share the gospel message and live our new life in Christ in ways that foster peace and reconciliation among people and nations.

Destiny
Until Christ returns, we will strive to be faithful stewards of God’s creation and
ambassadors of his kingdom on earth, trusting the future to God, knowing that he alone has the power and grace to bring all history to completion and fulfill our hope to live with him in the eternal and perfect kingdom to come.

Scriptures
We affirm the Holy Bible as the inspired Word of God and the basis of our beliefs. We interpret the Bible in the light of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets and the complete revelation of God.