Family Bible Church seeks to uphold four core values. These values are not unique to our church as if other churches do not hold them, but these values govern where we will invest our greatest efforts.
1. The Word of God
We are committed to the inerrancy, authority and sufficiency of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Though we attempt to reflect this commitment in everything we do as a church, this commitment is best reflected in our teaching ministry. We pursue an expository method of teaching where the main idea of any sermon is our best attempt to understand, present and apply the main idea of a given text of the Bible.
2. The Family
One of the New Testament metaphors for the church is the family, or household of God (Galatians 6:10; Ephesians 2:19; 1 Timothy 3:15). Members of the church are church are referred to as “brother” more than fifty times and “sister” six times. The apostle Paul instructed Timothy to regard older men in the church as fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters (1 Timothy 5:1-2). This kind of language indicates the depth of regard and concern believers are to have for one another in the church. Our desire at Family Bible Church is to develop relationships where we consider one another as family. The Old Testament also demonstrates the central place of families in ancient Israel’s worship and instruction. God directed Israel to carry out its chief celebration of redemption, the Passover, by families (Exodus 12). And God entrusted the responsibility of instructing future generations primarily to parents (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). At Family Bible Church we believe the home is the ideal environment in which to teach children to know God, but the church can augment and equip parents for this discipleship role. We also desire for families to worship together at church and support one another in the responsibility of teaching future generations to love and obey God.
3. Prayer
The earliest Christian gatherings were marked by a devotion to prayer (Acts 2:42) and the church’s earliest leaders would not give up prayer in order to meet other valid needs facing the church (Acts 6:4). We desire prayer to be a central feature of what God’s family does when it gathers for worship. A prayerless church is a lifeless, powerless church. If we pray, we live and God unleashes his power in our midst by his Spirit.
4. The Gospel
The primary reason for our gathering together as Family Bible Church is our common faith in the gospel, or good news, concerning Jesus Christ–his sinless life, atoning death and victorious resurrection. We desire for everyone in our family to understand this good news clearly and cling to it not just as our only hope for eternal life, but also as our only hope in this earthly life. We also desire to be faithful in sharing this good news with others in our sphere of influence and supporting the spread of the gospel around the world through our involvement in missions.
