Fellowship of Faith began in 1999 as a dream by a group of people who set out to experience what it would mean to be a part of a community that was honestly striving to follow Jesus in our world today. We’re still striving to live out that dream, and though far from perfect, we know God continues to redeem.
We’re casual, contemporary, and kid-friendly in style, but what drives us is a desire to be a church that’s becoming more of what God calls the Church to be.
Our Mission
Make disciples who make disciples...
We want to make disciples who make disciples. Simply put, we see a disciple as someone who is radically pursuing a deeper relationship with Jesus. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus constantly invites people from all walks of life into a life of discipleship. It can be messy. It can be hard. It can be confusing. Which is why we think church should be about people helping each other on this journey.
We believe Jesus invites us into this, but not for our benefit alone. We believe each of us is called to pour into another as we were poured into by someone else. Thus creates an endless stream of disciples making disciples making disciples until Christ comes again.
Our Values
Our values are our DNA and the fiber of who we are. For us they strike at the heart of how we think disciples are made. Our values are our hills to die on. We would rather cease to be a church than depart from these. While they don't always describe us, they are definitely what we want to define us.
A Genuine Community
At Fellowship of Faith we never want to be a sea of nameless faces. One of the primary reasons this church began in 1999 was because a group of believers wanted to become a church where people live life together in the way Jesus describes. We want to be an Acts 2 church, where—
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)
Wholly Devoted to God
We believe we exist for the glory of God. People and churches are driven by all sorts of things— money, prestige, traditions, fads, fear, and the path of least resistance. We believe that each of us can so easily fall into these patterns. Recognizing this, we continually strive to honor God first and let all the rest follow.
A Desire to Be Real
We believe the church needs to be a place where people can come and see that Christians are real people experiencing joys, passions, and struggles. Because of this we strive to communicate God’s truth and share our experiences in open and honest ways. We believe it is important as a community to be honest about our shortcomings, authentic in our lives, and sincere in what we teach. We want to be humble as a church and express our faith in a way that is genuine.
A Willingness to Take Risks
We believe the only way to truly discover the depths of what God is calling us to do is by stepping out of our comfort zones and taking leaps of faith. We want to be willing to do whatever it takes to be obedient to him. This means we’ll try new and creative things if we think it can unleash a movement of God.
A Missional Spirit Infused into the Fiber of Everything We Do
We believe God yearns to redeem and restore every aspect of who we are and all of his creation. We believe the Church is meant to partner with God in bringing his restoration to our world. God’s call is not for us alone and Fellowship of Faith exists for something bigger than itself. We don’t see this mission as one component of the church. We see it as every component.
Statements on the Journey
Through our time together as a church, certain quotes, statements, and insights have struck us and come to provide a picture of how we think as a church.
The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart.
It is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice. It does not so much nibble at our shoe as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from bone to bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our smaller minded questions but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.
- Rich Mullins
The church as we know it is preventing the Church as God wants it.
- Wolfgang Simson
God never intended churches to be places of safety and predictability.
We’ve taken Jesus’ barbarian call and have sanitized it into a religion we call Christianity; a far cry from the movement we see in the apostolic church.
Jesus wants to pull us out of the doldrums of this civilized and tamed religion of mediocrity. He wants to release us to become an uncivilized, untamed incitement of faith, love and hope and reclaim that primal passion to serve a lost and broken humanity.
- Erwin McManus
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
- John Eldredge
We have no desire to tame the text.
We want to let it out of its cage and we want to see it prowl around our lives, devouring us and spitting out the bones. We don't want to be detached, methodical scientists who stand over the subject and apply the proper rules, methods, and procedures so that we can achieve favorable results.
The modern impulse is always to reduce it to simple principles and clever maxims. To continually insist that with enough work, it will all make sense and line up.
Life doesn't always line up.
In the new world, much of what is currently considered preaching and study will be rendered totally irrelevant. The Bible is not a nice book. It is not a clean book. It is not a guide to proper behavior. It does not even seem to care whether it is "relevant" or not.
The Bible is a revolutionary manifesto that could get you killed in many parts of the world.
It is living, it is breathing, and it demands that we surrender to it unconditionally so that it can transform us.
- Rob Bell
Foundational Theology
The Bible
We believe the Bible is the true and inspired word of God, and is without error in the original manuscripts. It is the authoritative source which governs all we do and believe.
The Historic Faith
We desire to conform our lives to Jesus, clinging to the orthodox, historic Christian faith. We believe that the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds are accurate summaries of the Bible’s teaching and apostles’ testimony of who Jesus is, and who he is not. We see the creeds as a kind of roadmap to help guide us through what the Bible teaches. They’re like Cliffs Notes that summarize some of the Bible’s major teachings.
We also hold to the writings of the early reformers contained in the Book of Concord as a guide for our doctrine and practice. The Book of Concord is a collection of documents put together by the 16th century evangelical reformers to express the gospel and other pertinent teachings of the Bible in greater clarity. You can check out the creeds and the Book of Concord at www.lcms.org.
God
We believe that there is one true and divine being, eternally existing in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each of whom possesses all the attributes and characteristics of deity. We believe he is the creator and preserver of everything, and that he is operating throughout history to fulfill his purposes.
Salvation
We believe history is an epic story. God created this world to be good and to exist in fellowship with himself. Humanity defied God and continues to rebel against him, thus tainting and destroying what God originally intended.
This corruption, called sin, separates us from God and renders us unable to be in fellowship with him. This fall which took place at the beginning of human history and continues today is the cause of all that is vile and wrong in the world, leaving us in dire need of salvation from God.
We believe out of his great love for us, God intervenes in history to restore his creation and bring us back into fellowship with himself. Salvation then, is wholly the work of God and is not the result of any intrinsic goodness or merit on our part.
Jesus
We believe that Jesus is God himself, who came to earth as a human being, in order to accomplish this salvation. Unable to save ourselves or ever get right with God on our own, we believe Jesus accomplished all that we could not do by giving his life as a sacrifice on a cross. We believe three days later he rose from the dead, and later ascended into heaven from where he promises to return again.
Human Destiny
We believe that just as Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, so he will return again to judge the world, raise the dead, and bring about the final fulfillment of all the promises we have from God. For those in Christ, this means eternal life in communion with God as he initially intended. For those who continue to reject God’s salvation, this means judgment and separation from God and his goodness for eternity.
Life
We believe that all those who come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ are a new creation. We believe God seeks to transform us into the likeness of his Son and restore us to what he always intended us to be. This means a life marked by the presence of God’s Spirit. As redeemed children of God we therefore seek to live lives of love, marked by holiness, obedience, and devotion to him.
Church
We believe the Church is not a building, but a community of Jesus-followers who meet in his name. While we gather in local communities, we believe these communities belong to a greater community of believers that transcends time, geography, nationality, and every other distinction humans create. We believe these communities are God’s chosen instrument to bring his salvation and goodness to a lost and dying world.
