There are some truths so fundamental to a church, that everything else seems to flow from those. They don’t discount other truths, but they do help explain why we do what we do and love what we love. At Redemption Church, we have three truth statements forming this core; everything else flows from these.
First, God is Beautiful. God is supremely and infinitely beautiful; in fact, He is the source of all that is beautiful. Our good, creative, and powerful Father made a beautiful world in which man would live, worship, and serve as His image-bearer. As image-bearers, we have been uniquely created to reflect the beauty of the divine. Unfortunately, we betrayed God and chose to worship idols made in our own image. Only God’s beauty, as revealed in Jesus, has the power to destroy our fascination with our idols and turn our hearts to joyfully worship the One who created us.
Second, Man is Broken. When we betrayed God in the garden by choosing to worship our beauty instead of his, we became fatally flawed and severely broken. That brokenness hasn’t completely removed our original image-bearing beauty, but it has shattered the mirror of the divine and created a separation between man and God. Thankfully, God has offered us redemption, providing Himself—in the person of Jesus Christ—to bear our brokenness and restore our beauty. Now we follow Jesus and join Him in the work of redemption.
Finally, the Church is a Brotherhood of Saints. The church is a Brotherhood of Saints; she is an outpost of light in a dark world, militant yet peaceful, gracious, discerning, and actively committed to living out the Great Commandment and achieving the Great Commission. The church is not safe, the church is not tame, the church is not a thing, nor is she a place. The church is a people, and these people—having been adopted by a loving Father—have become brothers and sisters. Thus, we love, we serve, we fight, we challenge, we grow, we pray, we forgive, and we worship as a family.