What We Believe

With the universal Christian Church, what we believe subscribes to what the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod teaches. We live in and respond to the love of the Triune God:

• The Father, creator of all that exists

• The Son, Jesus Christ, who became human to suffer and die for the sins of all human beings and to rise to life again in the ultimate victory over death

• The Holy Spirit, who creates faith through God’s Word and Sacraments.

These three persons of the Trinity are coequal and coeternal, one God, now and forever.

What is Lutheranism?

Our fellowship is called “Lutheran” because we follow the Bible based teachings of Martin Luther, which were the driving force for the Reformation of the Church in the 16th century. God used Luther to proclaim again the Biblical truth that in Jesus Christ, God is loving and merciful. Forgiveness and eternal life are gifts that God wants to give people through faith in Jesus. Luther’s goal was therefore not to add to Scripture or to split the church, but to re-form it from within to ensure that God’s gifts in Jesus were freely proclaimed with clarity and purity.

During the time of the Reformation, much of the church was reformed and revitalized and brought back to its Biblical roots. The teachings of the Lutherans were gathered together in the Book of Concord of 1580, and are used as a confession of faith by our church body. These documents are viewed as true expositions of Scripture. In other words, the Book of Concord points to and summarizes the most important teachings of Scripture. They are not meant to be a replacement or substitute for Scripture, however, just like a road map that summarized a journey would never be a substitute for an actual trip.

Confessional? You bet.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is called a “confessional” church body because we publicly confess our faith. We believe that the three ecumenical creeds are faithful declarations of the Christian faith. These include the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Likewise, the documents contained in the Book of Concord written in the 16th century are considered to be creedal confessions of the basic Christian faith, derived from Scripture.

This confession of our faith in Jesus Christ is what makes us confessional - period.