Gather Church Core Beliefs

(excerpt from Gather Church Constitution)

Section A: Statement of Foundational Ecclesiastical Convictions

For the purposes of these foundational corporate and ecclesiastical documents, the Church's heritage and doctrine shall be defined by a strict adherence to the following core biblical tenets:

Credobaptism (Believer's Baptism): The conviction that the New Testament ordinance of baptism is strictly reserved for individuals who have articulated a personal, conscious profession of saving faith in Jesus Christ, and that the only scripturally valid mode of baptism is full physical immersion in water. Paedobaptism (infant baptism) is explicitly rejected as a valid church ordinance.
Regenerate Church Membership: The principle that local church membership must be restricted exclusively to those who give credible evidence of a born-again lifestyle, biblical discipleship, and a personal covenant commitment to the local body.
Local Church Autonomy: The governing framework asserting that the local congregation is entirely self-governing, independent, and structurally free from any external ecclesiastical hierarchy, denominational control, or synodical authority. The local body retains ultimate human authority under Christ over its own assets, governance, and discipline.
The Priesthood of All Believers & Soul Competency: The belief that every true Christian has direct access to God through Jesus Christ alone, possessing equal standing and spiritual responsibility before God, without the necessity of human priestly mediation, while concurrently respecting the elder-led authority established by Scripture.

ARTICLE III: STATEMENT OF FAITH

This Statement of Faith represents a streamlined and concise summary of the core biblical convictions held by Gather Church.

Section 1: The Scriptures

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy and serves as our supreme authority for faith and practice.

Section 2: The Triune God

The one living and true God eternally exists as a Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, distinct in personal attributes but completely without division of nature, essence, or being. God is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. In the beginning, He created all things out of nothing by the word of His power for His own glory. He is infinite in holiness and all other perfections, and to Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience.

Section 3: God the Father

God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men, directing all things toward His ultimate glory.

Section 4: God the Son (Jesus Christ)

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, fully God and fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission.

Section 5: God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He exalts Christ, convicts men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He effects regeneration, bringing the sinner to a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ. He indwells every believer from the moment of salvation, sealing them unto the day of final redemption, and equipping them with spiritual gifts for the edification of the church body and service to the world.

Section 6: Man

Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, all human beings become transgressors and are under condemnation, requiring the regenerating grace of God.

Section 7: Salvation

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification is an act of God whereby He declares the sinner righteous solely through faith in Christ alone, based entirely on the imputation of Christ's righteousness and not on any human merit or works. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

Section 8: Sanctification and Christian Living

Sanctification is the progressive work of God whereby the believer is set apart for God's purposes and enabled to grow in spiritual maturity and obedience through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Every believer is commanded to walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel, putting to death the deeds of the flesh, pursuing personal holiness, and living a lifestyle that honors the moral and ethical mandates of Scripture. Good works are the inevitable fruit of a regenerated heart and serve as evidence of a living, saving faith.

Section 9: The Church

A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. The church is called to engage in personal evangelism, make disciples, plant biblical churches, and demonstrate the love of Christ through acts of mercy and justice toward the poor, vulnerable, and broken. Its scriptural officers are elders (also called pastors) and deacons.

Section 10: Baptism and the Lord's Supper

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior. The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.

Section 11: Religious Liberty and Civil Government

Civil government is of divine appointment, established by God for the interests and good order of human society. Government leaders are to be prayed for, honored, and conscientiously obeyed, except only in things opposed to the explicit will and law of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the absolute Lord of the conscience. The Church must remain structurally separate from the State, retaining absolute religious liberty to conduct its internal ministries, ecclesiastical discipline, and leadership selection without civil or judicial interference. Concurrently, in accordance with Scripture, the Church acknowledges the rightful authority of civil law enforcement in punishing criminal acts and protecting the physical safety of the vulnerable.

Section 12: Last Things

God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth. At death, the souls of the righteous pass immediately into the presence of Christ, remaining in conscious joy until the resurrection, while the souls of the unrighteous are cast into conscious misery until the final judgment. The dead will be raised, and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.

ARTICLE IV: STATEMENT ON MARRIAGE, SEXUALITY, AND GENDER

We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God (Gen. 1:26-27). Rejection of one's biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person; sex is an immutable characteristic created, assigned, and defined by God at conception.

We believe that the term “marriage” has only one meaning: the uniting of one biological man and one biological woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture (Gen. 2:18-24). We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other (1 Cor. 6:18; 7:2-5; Heb. 13:4). We believe that any form of sexual intimacy outside of the boundaries of biblical marriage—including premarital sex, adultery, homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, or use of pornography—is contrary to God’s design and Scripture.

ARTICLE V: FINAL AUTHORITY FOR MATTERS OF BELIEF AND CONDUCT

Section 1: The Word of God as Absolute Authority

The Statement of Faith (Article III) and Statement on Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender (Article IV) do not exhaust the extent of our beliefs. The Bible itself, as the inspired and infallible Word of God, speaks with final authority concerning truth, morality, and the proper conduct of mankind. For purposes of Gather Church’s doctrine, practice, policy, policy enforcement, and discipline, the Board of Elders is the Church’s final interpretive authority on the Bible’s meaning, application, and ecclesiastical intent.

Section 2: Unity in the Essentials and Charity in Non-Essentials

Gather Church seeks to foster a culture of deep biblical unity around the historic, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith as explicitly set forth in our Statement of Faith (Article III). On secondary theological issues, ministry methodologies, or matters of Christian liberty that are neither central to salvation nor explicitly mandated or prohibited by Scripture, the Church allows for open discussion, charity, and a variety of viewpoints. However, this freedom must never be weaponized to foster division, promote unbiblical lifestyles, or undermine the peace and order of the local body. The Board of Elders remains the final authority on whether a secondary issue has become a source of unscriptural factionalism or false teaching within the Church.