What we believe, in plain words.
You deserve to know what a church teaches before you trust it with your Sunday mornings — and with your family. Christians have been saying this together for the better part of two thousand years. We say it too.
The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.I 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 to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,
one holy Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
At Chalk Bluff, this creed isn’t just words on a webpage. Every time someone is baptized here, the newly baptized believer — still dripping, moments into their new life in Christ — leads the whole congregation in reciting the Apostles’ Creed as their very first act as a baptized Christian. It’s how we welcome each new believer into something far older and bigger than one church on Gholson Road: the whole family of Christians, across every century and every continent, who have confessed these same words.
As Baptists, a few convictions shape how we live this out together:
We believe every person can come directly to God through Scripture, without needing a priest, a bishop, or anyone else standing in between — what Baptists have long called soul competency. We baptize by immersion, following a person’s own profession of faith in Christ, as a public picture of dying to the old life and rising to the new. Each local church, ours included, is free and self-governing under Christ alone — not answerable to a denomination or a national body. And we hold to religious liberty: the freedom of every person, inside the church and out, to follow their conscience before God without coercion.
These convictions are expressed more fully in the Baptist Faith and Message (1963), which we hold the way Baptists always have — not as a creed that binds anyone’s conscience, but as a trustworthy guide to what Scripture teaches.
However this strikes you — whether these words feel like home, or you’re still working out what you believe — you are welcome here. Pastor David would genuinely love to talk it through with you. No pressure, no assumptions.