What We Believe...

God: There is one and only one living and true God, creator of heaven and earth, who exists eternally as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each having distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

God the Father:  God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace.  God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

God the Holy Spirit:  The Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, convicts the world of sin and draws people to Christ.  He also indwells all believers and is available to empower believers to lead a Christ-like life.  He also gives each believer spiritual gifts with which to serve the church and reach out to the unsaved.

The Bible:  The Bible was written by men divinely inspired by God and is God’s unique revelation to mankind.  The Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God.  It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.  It is the supreme and final authority on all matters upon which it teaches. 

Salvation:  God gives salvation and eternal life to anyone who trusts in Jesus Christ and in His sacrificial death on his or her behalf.  Salvation cannot be earned through personal goodness or human effort.  It is a gift that must be received through repentance and faith in Christ and His finished work on the cross.  

Baptism:  Everyone who receives Christ as Savior should, as soon as possible, follow Him in baptism- the immersion of a believer in water.  Baptism symbolizes faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior.  Baptism is a picture of the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life.  Baptism is not part of one’s salvation experience, but an act of obedience and a public testimony of that person’s new life in Christ.

Lord’s Supper:  An act of remembering Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  The bread represents Jesus’ broken body, and the fruit of the vine represents His shed blood.  In partaking of the Lord’s Supper, Christians memorialize the sacrifice of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming. 

The Church:  A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a local body of baptized believers who gather for worship, prayer, instruction, encouragement, mutual accountability and community with each other.  Through the church, believers invest time, energy and resources to fulfill the mission of God: reaching those who don’t know Jesus Christ and helping them to grow to follow Him with all their lives.  The New Testament also speaks of the church as the body of Christ, which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages.

Stewardship:  God is the source of all blessings, both materially and spiritually. All that we have and are, we owe to Him.  Christians are spiritual debtors to God and are, therefore, obligated to serve Him with their time, talents, and material possessions.

Marriage: Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God's unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

For a broader statement of our beliefs, see the Baptist Faith and Message (2000)

North Dayton Baptist Church History