Membership

For our Statement of Faith, we hold to the New Hampshire Confession of Faith 1833, as adapted. Our Statement of Faith, our Statement on Marriage, Human Sexuality and Sanctity of Human Life, and our Teaching Positions are subservient to the Scriptures. They should never be viewed as having an authority equal to that of the Bible. They are authoritative only in a limited sense, as far as they accurately reflect the meaning of the Scriptures. We view them and use them as a tool to promote, achieve, and maintain doctrinal understanding, purity, and harmony. While we strongly believe that the doctrines set forth in our Statement of Faith, Statement on Marriage, Human Sexuality and Sanctity of Human Life, and our Teaching Positions are an accurate summary of biblical truth, we do not require everyone joining this local church to understand and affirm them at every point. Members must affirm the Essentials for Membership, but may come to a different conclusion on other doctrinal matters the church affirms provided they do not promote dissension regarding the items listed in the Statement of Faith, Statement on Marriage, Human Sexuality and Sanctity of Human Life, or our Teaching Positions. By dissension we mean publicly or privately (in person or on social media) teaching or swaying members away from these doctrines. In addition, members must not be hardened in their opposition to any of these doctrines, but rather having a teachable spirit, willing to sit under and learn from those who teach in the church. All elders must uphold the standards in the Essentials for Membership, Statement of Faith, Statement on Marriage, Human Sexuality and Sanctity of Human Life, and our Teaching Positions.

The elders of Grace Life seek to provide doctrinal clarity by adopting a historical confession of the faith, and providing our teaching positions on numerous areas of doctrine. We contend that a church without a detailed doctrinal confession is vulnerable to ignorance, confusion, wolves and apostasy.

As we work together for unity in understanding, we do not require agreement on all points of doctrine in our statement of faith or teaching positions for membership, but affirmation of the following doctrines are requirements for membership at Grace Life Church:

• We believe the Bible as contained in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience.
• There is one and only one God. This God has revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures as a personal being existing eternally in three persons (the divine Trinity): God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit.
• We believe mankind, God’s crowning act of creation, was created in God’s image. However, as a result of The Fall, all mankind are sinners by nature and acts, deserving of God’s wrath. All mankind are unable to save themselves, and are unable to change themselves.
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, very God of very God, willingly humbled Himself in love for mankind, was born of a virgin, fully human. He led a sinless life, died a substitutionary, atoning death on the cross. Three days later he rose bodily from the dead. He ascended into heaven and now intercedes for His brethren on the right hand of His Father. He will one day return bodily to the earth to rule His Kingdom.
• We believe a person is saved, or justified, by an act of God’s free grace and not on any merit of their own. God pardons their sins and accepts them as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us (through Christ’s substitutionary atoning death and bodily resurrection) and received sola fide, by faith in Christ alone.
• Those who are justified will live eternally in the presence of God and all the redeemed, and those who are not justified will suffer eternal damnation in hell.