What We Believe
We are a confessional Reformed Baptist church. By this we mean:
Biblical: Providence Reformed Baptist Church holds the Bible to be the only standard to determine what we believe, what God requires of us, what we will teach and how our church must function.
Historically Grounded: Our faith “was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3 NKJV) in Scriptures. For this reason, we find church history of great value as we see this faith taught in the church for nearly two thousand years.
Reformed Baptist: We are not part of a denomination, yet we do think it is helpful to be open and up-front regarding what we believe. We know that saying we are Baptist would mean many things to many people, and so we can be more specific by saying that we believe that the Bible teaches what is known as the Reformed faith.
Confessional: The term Reformed Baptist has clear definition from church history; it is not a term we have defined for ourselves. As a church, we hold to the statement of faith for Baptists in the reformed faith written at the end of the 17th century: The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (also called "the 1689 Confession"). We are in agreement with the confession, not because it is the authority, but because we believe it to be true to what the Bible teaches.
How did the 1689 Confession Come About? The Confession is the result of many careful statements of what the Bible teaches on various subjects that have been published over the past two thousand years of Church history including statements of:
- Orthodox Christianity in the Early Church
- The Reformers in the Protestant Reformation
- The Reformed Faith
- Puritan Theology and Practice
- Congregationalist Church Order
- Baptist Church Order
Note: For those interested in a more detailed explanation of each of these, we have provided an expanded answer to the question, What is a Reformed Baptist? You can reach this from the button below.
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith ("The 1689 Confession")
The fullest and most accurate statement of what we believe is the 1689 Confession and in affirming that Confession of faith, we agree with C.H. Spurgeon: “It is not issued as an authoritative rule or code of faith, whereby you may be fettered, but as a means of edification in righteousness. It is an excellent, though not inspired, expression of the teaching of those Holy Scriptures by which all confessions are to be measured.”