Our Commitments

These commitments are a summary of our strategy as a particular body to apply God's word in our personal lives, our family life, and our communities here in the Tri-State area (IL, IA, WI). These reflect aspects of our church life that we believe are necessary and describe how we will conduct our ministry and church life.

We are committed to historical biblical Christianity.

The Bible is the sole authoritative rule of life. It is the one and only standard to judge right and wrong. Christians have spent thousands of years interpreting and applying this standard to their specific times. We are told constantly in this day and age that anything older than yesterday is irrelevant and so many Christians tend to view the historic creeds and catechisms as “old and outdated.” We strongly disagree and, while nobody is perfect, the work of the saints throughout the life of the church is to be viewed as a rich inheritance for the modern church.

We are committed to unity found in a generous orthodoxy.

While heresies (beliefs that are contrary to the Bible) are real and need to be refuted by Scripture, not all differences of opinion should be allowed to cloud or prevent fellowship. Many times, we agree with fellow Christians on general principles, only to disagree vehemently on the application of those principles. We must try to remember that there is but one table, the Lord’s Table, and then remind ourselves that everyone who sits at this table is our brother and sister and therefore we must strive for unity.

We are committed to passage-by-passage preaching of the Bible.

The Bible is full of passages and stories that make us uncomfortable because “we wouldn’t have done it like that, so surely God wouldn’t either!” We are taught to view ourselves as the “hero” of the story, which means we often choose not to see our own faults and shortcomings. However, after we remove our own ego from the equation, we are able to see the Bible (and not ourselves) as the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. The study of the scriptures is how we gain knowledge of our God and how we become better servants of our Lord.

We are committed to being accessible to the everyday Christian.

St. Jerome (4th Century) said it well when he said, “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for theologians to swim in without ever touching the bottom.” The goal of any church must be to present the Gospel of Christ in a way that anyone can understand. The covenant renewal service on a Sunday morning must be comprehensible to young and old (both in age and wisdom).

We are committed to addressing the issues of our day through the lens of Scripture.

If we believe that the Scriptures are the complete and true guide for life, it follows that we don’t believe that the biblical standards of truth, beauty, and goodness change with the times. Murder has always been murder. Idolatry has always been idolatry. The forms change with the times but the principles remain the same and so we believe the Bible speaks to our modern issues just as it spoke to the issues happening in Israel and the early church. In a day and age of relativism and subjectivism (every person can have their own truth), we believe the stable foundation of biblical truth to be a firm foundation in a world built on shifting sands.

We are committed to equipping our people to be salt and light.

The Church is not to be just another social club that happens to meet on Sunday mornings at 10 am. The primary object of Sunday morning is the worship of the one, true God who made the heavens and the earth. We gather together on Sundays to praise God and study the Bible. The gathering and studying should embolden us to take the things learned and apply them in our lives for the rest of the week. Whether we like it or not, our theology comes out of our fingertips, which means that what we believe is necessarily and inescapably reflected in the way we live our lives.