OUR PURPOSE:

"Loving people into a relationship with Jesus Christ and equipping them to fulfill their purpose in life."  We believe that God has created every person for a specific purpose in life.  It is our role as a church to help people discover why they were created by God and to help them fulfill that purpose in life.

OUR VISION:

"To R.E.A.C.H. families for Christ by being loving and flexible in our approach while remaining true to our beliefs."

R.E.A.C.H. stands for the five purposes of the church:  Reaching families, Embracing God in worship, Advancing spiritually, Connecting through fellowship, and Honoring God through ministry.

OUR CORE VALUES:

All people matter to God, and therefore, matter to us.  We seek to provide a place where you can feel right at home and find a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We believe in the family.  We want to provide encouragement, support, and training so that more families, including single individuals,  can succeed.

All ministry efforts are highly relevant while remaining biblically sound.  We seek to provide a place that is relevant to the culture of our community through the avenues of our facility, printed material, and use of drama and music.

Life-change and support happen within small groups.  We believe that spiritual growth occurs best in the context of meeting with other believers.  As such, we seek to offer many types of opportunities for involvement in small groups.

Excellence honors God and inspires people.  We strive for excellence in all aspects of our church life from our worship service to every area of ministry.

True worship celebrates and reflects on the greatness of God and his redemptive work in his people and the world.  We believe that God honors us with His presence when we direct our worship and praise to Him.

Loving relationships permeate every aspect of church life and Christ-followers should exhibit love, authenticity, and a desire for continuous growth.  The very character and nature of God is love.  As His followers we are to exhibit His love in all that we are and do.

The church is a unified community of growing believers – we encourage every believer to serve with the gifts and resources God has given to them.  God has given to each of His followers specific gifts to be used in His church.  We seek to both discover and use these gifts to His honor and glory.

Biblical truths and principles are transformational to real life.  We believe that not only is God’s Word  true, it really works when applied to our everyday lives.

Prayer is communication with God and is foundational to all that we do as a church.  We believe that prayer is vital to both the life of the individual and the life of the church.

We are committed to show Christ’s love to the world around us.  This includes compassionately meeting the spiritual and physical needs of both the local and the global community.

OUR BELIEFS:

First Church is a Bible-believing congregation in the Church of the Nazarene.

We believe in one Creator God, who reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit.  We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. 

We believe that the Bible is the inspired and relevant Word of God.

We believe that all people have sinned and need God’s grace and forgiveness which is abundantly available through Jesus’ death on  the cross.

We believe God draws us to Himself but the decision to respond is ours.

We believe that an individual must repent and trust Christ to receive forgiveness and eternal life.

We believe that as Christians we need to offer our whole lives to God (the biblical word for this is sanctification). When we give ourselves to God in this way, His Spirit can fully mold us into Christlikeness; His perfect love is reflected in our attitudes and actions; and God empowers us to live more abundantly.

We believe that the Church is the Body of Christ, carrying on his purposes in the world.

We believe that God can bring healing.

We believe that Jesus Christ is coming again.

We practice the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

OUR DISTINCTIVES:

Every church group has its distinctives:  the practices or beliefs that set it apart from other groups.

Sometimes this is confusing to people.  They say, “If the Bible is true and Jesus was who he claimed to be, why are there so many different churches with so many different beliefs?”

We are optimistic enough to believe that with all the differences in beliefs and practices, most Christian congregations still agree on 90-95% of Christian teaching, and that the other 5-10% we do not agree on falls in this category of “distinctives”.

While we get our name from Jesus of Nazareth, you might be asking what in the world is a modern-day Nazarene.  Well...

We are not Baptists, but like the Baptists… we believe in calling people to repentance and to witnessing to their new life in Christ through public baptism.

We are not Presbyterians, but like the Presbyterians… we believe in the power of the preaching of the Word of God to bring about change in people’s lives. 

We are not Lutherans, but like the Lutherans… we believe in salvation through Jesus Christ on the authority of Scripture alone.  We believe in salvation by faith alone and in salvation as a gift of God’s grace alone.

We are not Charismatics (no, we do not “speak in tongues” in our services) but like the Charismatics… we believe in the gifts of the Spirit.  God, through the Holy Spirit, gives people the power to live a Christlike life and to make a real difference in their world.

We are not Episcopalians (although John Wesley was a lifelong Anglican) but like the Episcopalians… we take worship seriously.  We just choose to be a little less “formal” in our worship services.

We are not Congregationalists… but we have borrowed some of their ideas on local church organization.

We are not Quakers or Moravians… but like these pietistic groups, we believe in living a careful life that testifies to the watching world that we belong to the Family of God.

And we are not United Methodists… although we have our roots in the Methodist tradition that grew out of John Wesley’s revival movement in the 1700's.  We have good fellowship with our United Methodist “cousins”, but we are organizationally separate for historical reasons.

WE ARE a warm and friendly group of people who desire, with God’s help, to live the kind of life that brings honor to Him.  We look to the Bible as our primary source for direction in our worship and our lifestyles.  We are life-centered in our teaching and sensitive to the needs and concerns of others.

We give people the opportunity to put their faith into practice through any number of avenues of service.  We are honored to take our place among the many who are called Christians.

We laugh and cry together, rejoice and grieve together, grow together and walk in faith together.  We aim to be a family for all who love Jesus, the Nazarene.