CORE BELIEFS ABOUT THE CHURCH
Central Fellowship is not attempting to be one our area's popular, hip or cool churches...but rather, we are striving to be a True, Biblical Church.
The "9 Marks of a Healthy Church" are explained by Pastor Mark Dever and serve as a guide to us at CFBC as we committ ourselves to being a true, biblical New Testament church.
1. PREACHING - Want to know how to be utterly counter-cultural and culturally-relevant at the same time? Try opening God’s Word, taking the main point of a biblical text, making it the main point of a sermon, and applying it to life today. (click on the orange text to open the videos of various pastors speaking about each subject)
2. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY - Sound doctrine...a church can’t live without it.
3. THE GOSPEL - The difference between a church and a non-church is whether or not it believes, teaches, and lives out the message of the gospel.
4. CONVERSION - God must act, and people must act. God must give life to the dead. People must repent of sin and trust in Christ.
5. EVANGELISM - Biblical evangelism means (i) sharing the message about Jesus’ death and resurrection with non-Christians and (ii) calling them to repent and believe.
6. MEMBERSHIP - Church membership isn’t just names on a list or an emotional attachment to your childhood church. It’s attending, loving, serving, and submitting to a congregation of people.
7. DISCIPLINE - Should the church look different from the world? The fact that Jesus and Paul commanded churches to practice discipline tells us the answer is “yes.”
8. DISCIPLESHIP - Christians learn by instruction and imitation, which means that churches are where both should happen.
9. LEADERSHIP - The Bible teaches that churches should be led by a plurality of godly, qualified shepherds. What does it call them? Elders.
9Marks.org
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DOCTRINAL BELIEFS ABOUT THE SCRIPTURES
The pastor of Central Fellowship holds to the historic 1689 London Baptist Confession. This confession of our earliest English Baptist forefathers, referenced and borrowed from the wonderfully written Westminster Confession of Faith originating from our Scottish Presbyterian brethren in the early 17th century. From the 1689 came the American New Hampshire Confession, the Philadelphia Confession and The Charleston Confession in the earlier days of Baptist life in America. (To download a PDF of the entire confession, click on the orange text above.)