What we believe

We believe God is real. That means that we can’t decide what God is like according to our whims and fancies. God is who he is and reveals himself to us in the light of nature (generally), and through his word (more specifically). Nature reveals God’s eternal power and divine nature. The Bible reveals God’s love and plan to rescue his people.

We believe God is in business of seeking and saving the lost, that he forms them into a new community (the church), and sends this new community to transform the world.

We are Evangelical

The book of Ephesians tells us that there is one faith. We believe that we are therefore joined together with our brothers and sisters across history and across the planet that share that faith. That common faith believes that God sent his Son to save sinners and is expressed more specifically in the Apostle’s Creed.

We are Evangelistic

We take seriously the Great Commission, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” While we believe God is sovereign, we also affirm the responsibility of each person to repent and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We further affirm our responsibility to extend the gospel invitation as a call to salvation to everyone who hears its message.

We are Reformed
The word “reformed” can be defined simply in two ways: 1) It is a reference to our historical link to the Reformation of the 16th century. In this manner we are heirs of the tradition which comes from Luther, Calvin, Knox and other reformers. 2) “Reformed” is used most commonly to refer to certain theological distinctives which have marked reformation believers, particularly those in the Calvinist tradition.

Reformed distinctives include the following beliefs:

• The sovereignty of God over all things including the choosing of believers apart from any merit of their own.
• All people are sinners and are totally unable to save themselves or even to cooperate with God in efforts to earn salvation.
• The irresistible grace of God providing for and preceding the faith of the individual.
• The sufficiency of God’s grace apart from which man is dead in sin and wholly defiled in all his faculties of soul and body.
• The safe-guarding of all for whom Christ died for eternal life.

We are Confessional
Our confession consists of the Essentials of Our Faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechism. We believe these documents to be a good and accurate summary of the Bible’s teaching. It is important to note that every church has a confession, formal or informal. Even churches that claim they have “no confession but Christ” summarize their convictions in some form to distinguish their members from those who are not believers or who do not believe in their distinctives.

We are Covenantal
In the Bible, the covenant is a pledge or bond of loyalty which God made with his people. It is a relationship of gracious love that God has initiated with us as his people throughout history. The covenant is a unifying principle of the Scriptures. It draws attention to the fact that there is only one way to salvation in both Old and New Testaments, by faith alone in Jesus Christ. This covenantal understanding of the Bible is in distinction from any system of understanding the Scriptures that would attribute differing ways of salvation to a succession of historical Biblical eras.

We are Gospel-Centered
The Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of God who became man. He lived a perfect life, the life we could not live because of sin. He died the death that we deserve by taking our sin upon Himself. He was then raised from the dead so that we too can experience new life. We believe that all we do and all that we are is shaped by the Gospel. We earnestly desire that our worship and service as a church reflect the transforming power of the Gospel. We endeavor by the enablement of the Holy Spirit to bring the Gospel to bear upon every arena of life, so that God might be glorified.

We are Presbyterian
We are convinced the most clear Biblical pattern is for churches to be governed by elders. They are all intensely committed to following the Biblical model of the church in teaching, leadership and structure. These men have as their goal the maturity of believers at Cornerstone and equipping them to do the tasks to which God has called them. As Presbyterians we are also connected with other churches that are part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Our pastor and representative elders get together three times a year to encourage one another, examine candidates for ministry, and coordinate our missionary and church planting efforts. Cornerstone is affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyerian Church.