WHAT WE BELIEVE

Freedom Church affirms the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed as our statements of faith. The Apostle’s Creed is believed to come out at the end of the 2nd century A.D. The Nicene Creed builds on the foundation of the Apostle’s Creed and comes out of the fourth century when the first major council of Christians was called together and composed this formative and definitive statement. This council was largely focused on discussing and defining the divinity and humanity of Jesus.

Both Creeds have stood the test of time as a standard of what Christians from every stream of the Body of Christ believe. It is more than an intellectual checklist of doctrine; it is a confession of worship that forms us as the people of God and draws us together into the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].1 With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic2 and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Apostle Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his 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,
he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I 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.

  • Early versions of the Nicene Creed do not contain the phrase “and the Son.”

  • The word catholic means “universal,” and is differentiated from the Catholic Church as a denomination of Christianity. 

Based on these foundational creeds, the following is how we frame up the foundational beliefs of Freedom Church:

  • We believe in one God represented in three persons at all times. 

    God the Father – The all-knowing, all-powerful, wholly good creator of the universe who exists outside of time and space.  

    God the Son – Jesus – fully God and fully man at the same time. The image of the invisible God and God’s message of saving love to a broken world. Born of a virgin, executed on a Roman Cross on a Friday and raised to life that Sunday Morning.

    God the Spirit – God’s presence with us in real time sent to comfort, convict, and empower God’s people.

    (Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 1:26-27, Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Matthew 3:16-17, John 1:1-1,14-18, John 8:58, John 16:7-16, John 17, Acts 1:8, Colossians 1:15-20, I John 4:10)


  • We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, the ultimate authority of our lives, and the way to human flourishing. The Bible was written over a 1600-year period by over 40 authors telling one large consistent message of God’s plan to fix the world broken by sin. 

    (Genesis 1:1-2, Isaiah 55:8-11, John 1:1-4, 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

  • We believe the Good News of our story is that God saves. We believe the world was created perfect and good. Because of sin (the free will created reality of turning away from God), God’s perfect world was broken. Salvation is the word used to describe God’s action throughout scripture of moving humanity toward everything God intended. Ultimate salvation is accomplished through Jesus’ victory on the cross and our faith in his accomplishment. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are saved from the penalty of sin, we are being saved from the power of sin, and we will one day be saved from the presence of sin. 

    (Genesis 3:1-15, John 3:16-17, Acts 4:12, Ephesians 2:8-9, Colossians 1:13-14 Colossians 2:13-15)

    We receive salvation by believing sincerely and wholeheartedly that Jesus is Lord and confessing that reality with our mouths. (Romans 10:9) 

  • We believe that Jesus came to introduce humanity to the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not a physical nation of a specific group of people, but is when God’s people, aware of God’s presence, are living out God’s ways, through the power of God’s Spirit. The Kingdom of God is reality as GOD sees it. It’s the invisible realities of God that take shape in our visible lives. 

    (Matthew 4:17, Matthew 5:1-15, Matthew 13, Luke 17:20-21)

  • We believe the mission of God is to restore creation back to everything God intended and to redeem the human story tainted by the presence, power, and penalty of sin. It is for this mission that Jesus came, lived, taught, died, and rose to life again, to communicate to a broken world the “God Saves!” The mission of God is that this message and this reality be communicated to and experienced by a hurting world. 

    (Genesis 1-2, Isiah 61:1-4, Luke 4:14-21, Revelation 21-22)

  • We believe the mission of God is carried out by the people of God, called “The Church.” The Church is more than a building. The Church is the people of God over the last 2000 years who have made it the goal of their lives to carry out the mission of God and the message of God to the hurting world. Though the Church takes on many different forms and expressions culturally, and locally, it remains the physical manifestation of God’s Kingdom in the world today, as both a people and a place, and is responsible for seeing God’s Kingdom take shape in the lives of the people it comes in contact with. 

    (Matthew 16:18-19, Acts 1:6-8, Acts 2:42-47)

  • We believe that the Great Commandment is our most central aim, and the Great Commission is our current assignment. We are to love God and love people. And we are to help people learn how to follow Jesus. 

    The Great Commandment: 

    Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:34-40 

    The Great Commission:

    Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

The Process of Discipleship

Our mission is to help people discover and live in the freedom and authority of Jesus. 

This means we experience and allow our lives to be shaped by everything God has planned for humanity. We do this by learning how to follow Jesus as Lord and everything his word reveals to us. 

This process of growth is often called, “discipleship.”

After Jesus rose from the dead he gave a command to His disciples, those who followed him and learned from him (disciple means “learner.”)

As we learn how to follow Jesus, we are called to help other people learn how to follow Jesus as well.

When we decide to follow Jesus, our life will begin to reflect the following fruit on both an individual and collective level. 

WE WORSHIP

God is the center of our attention, affection, and actions. We aim to bring honor to God in everything we do.
(Psalm 103, Psalm 84, Matthew 22:37-40, John 4:23)

WE GATHER

The Church is the apparatus of God’s love and mission to humanity.
We stay tethered to the local expression of the church wherever we live.

(Hebrews 10:23-25, James 5:16)

WE PRACTCE

The ways of God laid out in the bible are like a whole new operating system for humanity. We lean into the practices of our faith in order to help us live life God’s way.

(Acts 2:42-47, Philippians 4:9)

(Practices include scripture, prayer, baptism, communion, as well as everything mentioned here.)

WE SERVE

The Church is the microcosm of what God has planned for the world. We operate as the hands, feet, mouth, and heart of Jesus to a world that is broken and longing to be made whole.

(Matthew 20:26-28, Galatians 5:13-14)

WE GIVE

The whole of the bible could be summed up in the concept of giving from a motive of love. From creation in Genesis to the full redemption of creation in Revelation, we see God giving of himself in order to set the story right. As his people we live with open hands and joyfully give of our time, talent, and treasure to his redemption plan in the world.

(2 Corinthians 9:6-8, Matthew 6:19-34)

While these seem like simple actions, you will find yourself growing in each of them for the rest of your life!

To help people grow into these attributes, as a church we do 3 things:

SUNDAYS

We gather on Sundays to fix our eyes on the reality of God and his Kingdom, be shaped by his word, and encouraged to live out the Kingdom of God in our everyday lives, together. Sunday is a refuge and refueling. A time to receive and contribute. A place to belong and become. We gather weekly with the larger body of God’s people as was custom in scripture to be reminded of the larger story we are tethered to - the story behind us, stories around us, and the one ahead of us all. 

SMALL GROUPS

We practice doing life in consistent, smaller gatherings with other followers of Jesus. This is another environment where we learn together, welcome one another, and find hope and healing through each other. Small groups are the way our larger, collective body of people finds friends and allies in their faith journey.

SERVING

We look for opportunities to use our giftings and how we see the world to serve the world around us. Our serving begins with our church family and gatherings, and it spreads to our spheres of influence and ultimately the world. Serving is our response to a hurting world, informed by the hope of Jesus and how God has gifted each of us. 

As we live out all of this in our own lives and help other people learn how to do the same, we find ourselves living out the mission of God in the world.

Reasons People Have Left Our Church Community

We strive for unity in the Church (the vast community of God’s people throughout the world). But unity does not mean uniformity. There are many reasons why people find a certain church community a good fit for them or not. Over the history of our church, we have found that people have left our community of faith for mostly one of the following reasons:

  • We believe learning how to follow Jesus in every area of our lives takes our whole life. We believe it’s an ongoing process that every area of church life impacts to some degree. There are some who see discipleship solely as a one-on-one process of studying scripture and applying it to our lives in active accountability with another person. We believe that is a part of a person’s discipleship but not the entirety of it. We believe discipleship happens within relationships and through the life of the Church. To some, our focus on Sundays, Small Groups, and Serving as a process of discipleship is not enough.

  • We believe there is only one Mission. That mission is to help people see and experience the Kingdom of God and learn how to follow Jesus throughout the world. We support efforts locally, nationally, and internationally that help accomplish this is various ways. Over the history of our church, we have had people leave because they think we should be more focused locally and different people leave because we should be doing more internationally. This highlights that what some people are passionate about is different than others and this becomes a preference issue that someone wants more attention toward.

  • We believe Genesis 1 gives humanity a picture of men and women being co-equal. This does not mean that men and women don’t have differences; they do and we celebrate them! But we believe the overarching heart and story of God’s Kingdom is the mutual submission and leadership that both genders bring. The New Testament passages that seem to say the opposite are contextually specific cases of a culturally imbalanced approach to gender. The overarching thread of God’s story in scripture is the equality of male and female and that is represented in our church’s leadership. 

  • We believe we are all in different places in our spiritual lives. We strive to be a community of faith where people can genuinely see what the Bible calls us to and clearly find their next step in that journey. While we hold to a traditional Biblical sexual ethic embraced by the church for 2000 years (Gender is assigned by God and marriage and sex are designed by God for the marriage covenant between a man and woman), we know not everyone in our culture sees it the same way. We hold to the truth of what scripture teaches us about sex and marriage AND provide space for people to navigate their response to that. Some people demand a quicker response from people who would identify with this community, while we as a church want to walk with people, invite them into the practices of our faith and allow space for God to transform their lives.

All of these reasons for leaving underline the reasons many more have stayed. We believe at best all of us only see in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). That means we need time, patience and grace as we all continue to walk closer to Jesus and the life he has for us. Here at Freedom Church, we use the phrase often, “Welcome home.” We believe this embodies both God’s heart toward humanity and our heart to be a place where people can feel the hospitality of God’s Kingdom and find a place to belong, maybe even before they fully believe.