I came across an interesting ministry statement of faith. Unlike all others I have seen before, this one comes in the form of a story…
Source: https://www.thecrowdedhouse.org/statement-of-faith
The Crowded House is
evangelical, missional, reformed and complementarian.
OUR
STATEMENT OF FAITH EXPRESSES OUR CONVICTIONS
IN
THE FORM OF A STORY – A SUMMARY OF THE STORY GOD TELLS IN THE BIBLE.
WE
ARE A PEOPLE LONGING EAGERLY FOR THE FUTURE
We are waiting for the
arrival of a new heaven and earth, which God will bring about through his
transforming power. A day is coming when Christ will come again to establish
his reign of justice and freedom. He will create the home of righteousness
which his people crave, banishing forever sin, Satan and death.
In renewed bodies in a
renewed creation, we will live as God’s people in unbroken relationship with God
and each other. At the center of everything will be the one God, eternally
self-existent as God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the creator and sustainer
of all that is. His character is constant and his purposes unchanging. He will
be all our glory. This will be life as it was meant to be lived – life in all
its glorious and satisfying fullness.
WE ARE A PEOPLE FORMED
DECISIVELY IN THE PAST
From before the creation
of the world, God the Father chose us and blessed us in his Son, Jesus. We
depend entirely upon the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, our King and
Rescuer. Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, who shares our humanity, having been born
of Mary. She conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit while she was still a
virgin.
As the Son of God, Jesus
came to make God known. As the Servant of God, Jesus came to undo the
corruption of humanity and the divine curse on creation caused by the first
man, Adam. He came to liberate us from our devastating self-love and to rescue
us from the consequences of our ongoing willful refusal to love God and others.
Jesus fulfilled the promises made by God to Israel and realized all that Israel
was called, but failed, to be. He gave us a glimpse of the world to come,
calling the people of God to follow him and to demonstrate the goodness of his
rule by their shared lives.
Through
the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus lived the life Adam and the rest of
humanity could not live. And through the Holy Spirit, Jesus died the death that
Adam and the rest of humanity deserve to die. On the cross he endured and
exhausted God’s righteous anger against our rebellion, paying its penalty in
full. Jesus rose physically from the dead, proving the effectiveness of his
death. The resurrection is the promise and beginning of God’s new world. Jesus
then returns to his Father in heaven, from where he now rules over all
creation. He sent his Spirit to apply all that he achieved on the cross. The
Spirit equips us as God’s people to live for Christ and speak of him so that
others might submit to his gracious reign. In this way, Jesus sovereignly
gathers his church as he rescues those the Father has given him.
WE
ARE A PEOPLE LIVING JOYFULLY IN THE PRESENT
God has given his Spirit
and word to his people to equip us to serve him in the world and to bring us to
his future.
God the Holy Spirit is the
giver of life, the one who convicts of sin and the creator of saving faith. He
is the one who opens our eyes to see the beauty of Christ so that through the
Spirit we succumb willingly to irresistible grace. He is the one who gives us
new hearts to turn to Christ and trust him. The Spirit sets us apart for Christ
and makes us more like him through the word of God.
The Holy Spirit is the
author and interpreter of the Bible, which is God’s word to his world
concerning his Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible reflects the characters and
circumstances of the people who wrote it, but the Holy Spirit guided the entire
process. So in the Bible God reliably reveals his character and plans as he
tells the story of his grace in rescuing sinners for his glory. Because it is
the word of God, the Bible is the final authority in matters of conduct,
questions of life and issues of truth.
We live together in union
with Christ as his church. God is littering the world with local expressions of
this church. We celebrate our cultural diversity while enjoying unity in
Christ. These churches are a means of grace to a needy and dying world. God has
given us the task of making the good news of Jesus known to those without God
and without hope. Our community life points ahead to what God has in store for
his world. So, by word and life, we model and offer reconciliation to those
alienated from God by their willful rejection of him. We call people to turn
from despising God and urge them to trust in Christ. Without Christ, people
face only the judgment of being forever cut off from God and all that is good.
It is by grace that we live in the present as forgiven sinners. We never earn
the right to be called children of God. The gift of faith hears the ‘not
guilty’ verdict that God will proclaim for his people on the coming day of
judgment and enables us to live in the light of it now.
As
those welcomed, forgiven and accepted, we become a community of those who
welcome, forgive and accept. We respond to the gospel in baptism, expressing
that we have become part of the people of God. The Lord’s Supper is the meal we
regularly share together to celebrate the work of Christ and express that we
continue to be part of the people of God together. Our shared life proclaims
the Lord’s death until he returns to make good the invitation to his eternal
banquet.
