Theological Distinctives
Our Mission: Grace Christian Fellowship exists to glorify God through gospel-centered worship, evangelism, discipleship, and community.
We are committed to the authority and sufficiency of scripture.
We believe that every word of the Bible and every part of the Bible is God breathed (2 Tim. 3:16-17), making the Bible free from error in all that it affirms to be true in the original autographs (Ps. 12:6; Tit. 1:2; 2 Tim. 3:16-17). This makes the Bible the authoritative rule for the Christian life, Christians ethics, and Christian doctrine. The Bible is totally sufficient and must not be added to, superseded, or changed by later tradition, extra-biblical revelation, worldly wisdom, psychology, medicine, anthropology, or science (Rev. 22:18-19; 2 Tim. 3:15-17). Consecutive expository preaching on the Lord’s day is the best way to honor the authority and sufficiency of scripture. For a fuller formulation of the authority and sufficiency of scripture, see the Chicago Statement on Biblical inerrancy.
We are committed to gospel centrality.
We believe that the gospel—the good news of God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ—is the pinnacle of His redemptive acts (Ephesians 1:9–12), the center of the Bible’s story (Luke 24:44–47), and the essential message for our faith, life, and witness (1 Corinthians 15:3–11). Furthermore, the gospel is not just the ABC’s of the Christian life but the A to Z of the Christian life. We are committed to preaching the gospel from all of scripture, singing the gospel, praying the gospel, and building our church upon the gospel (2 Timothy 4:2; Colossians 3:16; Matthew 16:18). Our ultimate hope in all that we do is not our plans and labors, but the virgin birth, perfect life, substitutionary death, victorious resurrection, ascension, and glorious return of Jesus Christ.
We are committed to reformed theology.
Scripture presents the all-glorious, triune God as the source and end of all things (Romans 11:36), sovereignly working all things according to His will (Ephesians 1:11). At the center of God’s purposes in the world is the exaltation of His glory through the redemption of sinners (John 17:1–26). To this end, we believe that God sovereignly and unconditionally elects men and women to be saved in order to display His immeasurable grace and glory (Ephesians 1:3–6; Romans 9:11). God’s sovereign grace in salvation humbles us, fills us with gratitude, and compels us to worship Him and share the message of His grace to all people.
We are committed to complementarity.
We believe it was God’s glorious plan to create men and women in His image, giving them equal dignity and value in His sight, while appointing differing and complementary roles for them within the home and the church (Genesis 1:26–28; Ephesians 5:22–33; 1 Timothy 2:8–15; Gal. 3:28-29). Because these roles give different expressions to God’s image in humanity, they should be valued and pursued in joy and faith. As the redeemed community of God, the church has a unique opportunity and responsibility to celebrate this complementarity, to contend for it against cultural hostility, and to protect it from sinful distortions. For a fuller statement of these matters, please see the Danvers statement.
We are committed to continuationist pneumatology.
With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God’s purpose to dwell among His people entered a new era (Exodus 33:14–16; Leviticus 26:12; John 14:16–17; Acts 2:14–21). We believe the Holy Spirit desires to continually fill each believer with increased power for holiness and witness, including the giving of His supernatural gifts for the building up of the church and for various works of ministry in the world (Acts 1:8; Galatians 5:16–18; 1 Corinthians 12:4–7). We are eager to pursue God’s active presence in all its breadth, that Christ may be magnified in our lives, in the church, and among the nations (Psalm 105:4; 1 Corinthians 14:1; Ephesians 2:22).
We are committed to the local church.
The local church is at the center of God’s plan to glorify himself in human history (Eph. 3:10-11). Therefore, we exhort our members to pursue meaningful relationships within the church (Heb. 10:24-25; Acts 2:42-48), serve wholeheartedly in the church, and give their resources to the church. Furthermore, we honor formal church membership, practice church discipline (Matt. 18:15-20), train church leaders, and submit to biblical church government (Heb. 13:17). Finally, we give the majority of our mission money to ministries devoted to planting and building healthy local churches.
We are committed to elder governance.
Jesus Christ reigns as head over His church, and He gives to His church elders (or pastors) to govern and lead local churches under His authority (Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 4:11; Titus 1:5). We believe that men, qualified by both character and gifting, are to serve as elders, shepherding God’s people as under-shepherds of Christ (1 Timothy 2:12; 3:1–7; 1 Peter 5:1–3). A church’s health is to a great degree dependent on the spiritual maturity of its elders, and so our aim is to strengthen the current elders of GCF while identifying and training new ones (Acts 20:28; 2 Timothy 2:2).