We believe that a church is an organized assembly of saved, baptized believers meeting for worship, prayer, fellowship, teaching, discipline, to practice the ordinances, and to carry out the Great Commission; this assembly is independent, financially supported by the tithes and free will offerings of God’s people, and free to govern itself without ecclesiastical interference and that this assembly is accountable directly to its Head (Jesus Christ) through His under-shepherd, the Pastor. We reject the notion that the church is ‘invisible’. The church is a local assembly likened to a body. Each member of the body is given at least one service gift of the Spirit for the edification of the body of Christ. Matthew 18:15-17; Matthew 28:19, 20; Acts 2:41, 42; Romans 12:1-8; I Corinthians 16:1-2; 1 Corinthians 12:27; 2 Corinthians 8 & 9; Colossians 1:18.
We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by the authority of the local church, to show forth a solemn and beautiful emblem of our faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Saviour with its effect in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life; and that it is prerequisite to the privileges of a church membership and to the Lord’s Supper, which the members of the church by the use of bread and the fruit of the vine are to commemorate together the death and coming of the Lord, preceded always by solemn self-examination.