The church confesses the Scriptures to be the Word of God written, witnessing to God’s self-revelation. Where that Word is read and proclaimed, Jesus Christ the Living Word is present by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the reading, hearing, preaching, and confessing of the Word are central to Christian worship.  We accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to us.

We believe God is one living and true God, but who mysteriously exists in perfect community as three equal and fully divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We believe the understanding of God as Triune describes the inexhaustibly rich love of God shared among the persons of the Trinity in all eternity and communicated to the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

See Chapter 3 of The Second Helvetic Confession in the PCUSA Book of Confessions for more detailed discussion.

 We trust in God, whom Jesus called Abba, Father.  In sovereign love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God’s image, male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community.  But we rebel against God; we hide from our Creator.  Ignoring God’s commandments, we violate the image of God in others and ourselves, accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.  We deserve God’s condemnation.  Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.  In everlasting love, the God of Abraham and Sarah chose a covenant people to bless all families of the earth.  Hearing their cry, God delivered the children of Israel from the house of bondage. Loving us still, God makes us heirs with Christ of the covenant. Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.

We trust in Jesus Christ, fully human, fully God.  Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.  Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition, Jesus was crucified, suffering the depths of human pain and giving his life for the sins of the world.  God raised this Jesus from the dead, vindicating his sinless life, breaking the power of sin and evil, delivering us from death to life eternal.

Item description            We trust in God the Holy Spirit everywhere the giver and renewer of life.  The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church. The same Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture, engages us through the Word proclaimed, claims us in the waters of baptism, feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.  In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

            We believe the Bible when it says that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Unlike crime, which involves the breaking of human law, sin is a condition of the heart or an expression of that condition where we are estranged from God and fail to trust in God.  Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.  God has always been faithful to the people of Israel and to the church. We believe God has offered us salvation because of God’s loving nature. It is not a right or a privilege to be earned by being “good enough.” No one of us is good enough on our own — we are all dependent upon God’s goodness and mercy. From the kindest, most devoted churchgoer to the most blatant sinner, we are all saved solely by the grace of God.  Out of the greatest possible love and compassion God reached out to us and redeemed us through Jesus Christ, the only one who was ever without sin. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection God triumphed over sin.  We believe it is through the action of God working in us that we become aware of our sinfulness and our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Just as a parent is quick to welcome a wayward child who has repented of rebellion, God is willing to forgive our sins if we but confess them and ask for forgiveness in the name of Christ.

In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives.

We believe the Church is the body of Christ.  The Church is to be a community of faith, hope, love and witness.  While the concept of the church as a voluntary association of like-minded individuals is enormously popular today, we believe this misses the point of the Biblical understanding of church.  We believe we are one body—not because we find one another agreeable or each other’s views congenial, but because God in grace and mercy has called us together. Our unity does not lie in us. Our unity is Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Supper enacts and seals what the Word proclaims: God’s sustaining grace offered to all people. The Lord’s Supper is at once God’s gift of grace, God’s means of grace, and God’s call to respond to that grace. Through the Lord’s Supper, Jesus Christ nourishes us in righteousness, faithfulness, and discipleship. Through the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit renews the Church—and us—in its identity and sends the Church—and us—to mission in the world.  We celebrate an “open table” — meaning that all who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are welcome to participate in this sacrament in their journey to know Christ.

Baptism is the sign and seal of our incorporation into Jesus Christ.  Baptism is the bond of unity in Jesus Christ. When we are baptized, we are made one with Christ, with one another, and with the Church of every time and place. In Christ, barriers of race, status, and gender are overcome; we are called to seek reconciliation in the Church and world, in Jesus’ name.  Both believers and their children are included in God’s covenant love. The baptism of believers witnesses to the truth that God’s gift of grace calls for our grateful response. The baptism of our young children witnesses to the truth that God claims people in love even before they are able to respond in faith. These two forms of witness are one and the same Sacrament.  God’s faithfulness to us is sure, even when human faithfulness to God is not. God’s grace is sufficient; therefore, Baptism is not repeated.

In Baptism, each Christian is claimed in the covenant of God’s faithful love. Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family. Marriage involves a unique commitment between two people, traditionally a man and a woman, to love and support each other for the rest of their lives. The sacrificial love that unites the couple sustains them as faithful and responsible members of the church and the wider community. In civil law, marriage is a contract that recognizes the rights and obligations of the married couple in society. In the Reformed tradition, marriage is also a covenant in which God has an active part, and which the community of faith publicly witnesses and acknowledges.  In the Presbyterian Church the session has authority to permit or deny the use of church property for a marriage service and nothing in the current Presbyterian Church (USA) polity shall compel a minister to perform nor compel a session to authorize the use of church property for a marriage service that the minister or the session believes is contrary to the minister or the session’s discernment of the Holy Spirit and their understanding of the Word of God.

Human sexuality is a complex topic.  We recognize we have much to learn in order to be faithful to Christ and that LGBTQ+ terms help us to see that there is a difference between biological sex and gender and in our fallen world, that there can be genetic and biological diversity that exists outside “normal” male xy and female xx chromosomal patterns.  We recognize that LGBTQ+ terms can simply mean not heterosexual, but have nothing to do with same-sex sexual behavior.  We invite all people, including LGBTQ+ persons, into full participation within our church. At FPC, participation includes attendance, serving, receiving the sacraments, and membership. We also invite LGBTQ+ individuals and their families to not only participate but to step into the discipleship journey and receive spiritual care that every sacred person deserves.  We believe it is our calling as a church to invite a diverse community of believers, who may not share every thought, to share in the care and burdens of one another. We pray that our unity be an expression of the grace and love which we have received from Jesus Christ and that the same grace and love powers our connection within the body of our church, our community, and our world.

We fully affirm women in ministry leadership at all levels of church life, including teaching, preaching, and pastoral ministry. This value is rooted in what we believe to be the most faithful interpretation of Scripture, specifically in the equal gifting of the Holy Spirit in all people, the witness we see in both the Old and New Testaments of women called to lead in the work of God, and the example of Jesus throughout his ministry. As a church that desires to reflect the Kingdom of God, we believe that supporting the equal gifting and calling of women is a crucial part of participating in the restoration of what God originally intended for humanity.