FAQs

WHAT IS LORD’S DAY WORSHIP?

Lord’s Day worship is the meeting of a local church on Sunday, the first day of the week, worshipping the Triune God in spirit and truth, according to His revealed will, in Word and Sacrament, in confession and prayer, in worship and rest, looking forward to that ultimate rest that Christ, as the last Adam, has entered for us and for our salvation.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CONFESSIONAL?

To be confessional is to hold to a historic confession of faith, as an accurate summary of what God has revealed in Scripture. All churches have a creed or confession; or a common idea of what they believe the Bible teaches, except these are usually not written down. The benefit to a robust, public and historic confession is that members can all be accountable to one another in defending and living out those beliefs. And outsiders will have a clear idea what will be taught and held to by the church body. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith is our organizing doctrinal statement of faith. We also agree with the Orthodox and Baptist Catechisms, as well as the essential doctrines of the faith as laid out in the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed & Athanasian Creed.

WHAT IS THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP?

The Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW) is the practice that we are to worship God only in the manner He has commanded us in His Word. As the 1689 Confession of Faith says, “But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited to his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture” (22.1).

WHAT ARE THE ORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE?

The ordinary means of grace are those means that God has instituted to bring grace to believing souls. This grace comes from the Father, through the Son, by the delivering of the Spirit, in and through the ordained means. (LBCF 14.1)

  • The Word

  • Baptism & the Lord’s Supper

  • Prayer

These are not instruments we use to get grace, but means God uses to bring us into fellowship with Him. This also keeps us from seeking to invent new ways of receiving grace from God, and fixes our eyes on the finished work of Christ.

WHAT IS CHURCH MEMBERSHIP?

Church membership is an outward relationship between an individual and Christ Jesus, the Head of the church, through joining themselves to the visible body of Christ in this world, the church. This is where the people of God are normally gathered, protected and preserved. (Othrodox Catechism, Q 53) Church membership, therefore, is about belonging to this visible community in a local congregation. The church is not a voluntary association of individuals who are loosely united by consumer preferences or cultural practices. Rather, the church is the people who belong to Christ, and the place where Christ meets them through the means he has ordained. (See URC Manual) We never mature beyond the nurture of the church. No Christian can sustain himself as a self-feeder. We cannot be our own pastors. Rather, God has commanded us to submit ourselves to the preaching, teaching, and oversight of those shepherds whom he has placed over us in his love. In membership we obtain:

  • Spiritual Nurture through the Word

  • Spiritual Nurture through Accountability and Discipline

  • Spiritual Nurture through Baptism and the Lord’s Supper