core beliefs
Identity
We are a community of people following Jesus and learning to live in his ways.
If you hang around our church very long, you‘ll hear this phrase repeated in a number of different contexts. It reflects the core of who we are as a church and what we understand our calling to be. As a result, we repeat it often, reminding ourselves and each other of our identity as a community–and not just that. Because our identity is tied to our calling, we want to see it brought to life! Thus, to “flesh” it out, we express this identity, or calling, in three ways, each movement critical and building upon the previous one.
Calling
We seek to form, live, and extend the life of God in Christ.
Forming
We want to help form people in the way of Jesus. Being formed in the way of Jesus means to have an identity shaped by God in the image of Christ.
Living
We seek to live a common life that proclaims good news. To live out the good news means to have a lifestyle rooted in the habits and practices of Jesus Christ and his disciples.
Extending
We believe that God’s Spirit is alive and active and doing the creative, redemptive, and restorative work of the gospel in creation all around us. As a community with Jesus at our center, we seek to join God in this work.
Commitments
The scope of our calling lies in five commitments: Worship, Creativity, Learning, Hospitality, and Justice.
Worship
We believe that worship is a holistic way of living life in Christ. We believe that worship is the progressive surrender of everything we know of ourselves to all that we know of God. We are a community that seeks to glorify and experience God in multiple expressions of worship in every facet of life.
Creativity
We believe that creative expression mirrors God’s own nature and character. As women and men made in God’s image, we recognize our role as stewards of creation, joining the eternal Father and the animating Spirit as co-creators with Christ. We seek to live in creative and joyful harmony with God, expressing the good news by all appropriate means.
Learning
We believe that we are called to grow in our knowledge of God, the Scriptures, our world, and ourselves. We seek wisdom, knowing that true knowledge yields itself to those who persevere over a lifetime. More than simply accumulating information, we seek to be faithful in our lives to that which we have learned in mind, spirit, and body.
Hospitality
We believe that God’s love for people and his desire for relationship is the heart of the gospel. Because people are so important to God, we believe that people should be important to the church. Therefore, we reach out into a diverse community to make space for and welcoming people to join us in our life together. We desire to give people the opportunity to explore the gospel and to know and follow Jesus Christ together with us.
Justice
We believe that our church is called to participate in God’s work of renewal and restoration in the world. Called to love our neighbors and so embody the love of God in the world, we seek to engage our neighborhood(s), our city, and our world humbly, prayerfully conversing and seeking to express God’s heart to those among whom we live. We seek to participate with God, who is bringing justice to a world filled with injustice, fear, violence and poverty. These five commitments help shape and determine where we go and how we use our resources. Each of these five commitments is tied to our way of life and our sense of mission as a community.
Statement of Faith
Jacob’s Well Church holds to the truths of the historic Christian faith, including the following items of belief, as stated in the Apostles’ Creed.
The Apostles Creed
We believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
Additionally, we would highlight the following statements as critical to how our faith is understood and expressed as a community:
We are deeply committed to the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God.
We believe that the Scriptures have one unifying message: that Jesus Christ is Lord and is at the center of God’s saving purposes for humanity and creation. This is the core of our biblical theology. Thus, we seek to read Scripture, ourselves, and life (“text, soul and culture”) in the light of Christ.
In Christ – incarnate, crucified, risen, ruling, and returning – the love, grace, truth, and wisdom of God are revealed. We are brought into relationship with God through Christ and transformed into his image by the Spirit.
The church is the Body of Christ, formed, equipped, and empowered by the Spirit of Christ. In the power of the Spirit, the church proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and works for the transformation of individual lives and society.
We celebrate the world as God’s good creation; we recognize the brokenness of the world, due to sin. While sin and evil remain real and tragic, we recognize the dignity of every human being as created in the image of God.
We acknowledge Christ as God incarnate, who reveals both God and what it means to be truly human. Through Christ’s death, resurrection and transforming power we are being restored into his likeness.
We acknowledge the present reality of evil, suffering and struggle.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit work for the salvation and healing of all peoples. Followers of Jesus must proclaim forgiveness and new life in Christ and cooperate with the transforming work of the Spirit in every sphere of human activity, as they strive to be salt and light in the world.