To begin, not all we believe can be represnted on a single page. However, we do believe our faith to be supported in both the pages of Christian revelation, and world around us.
We believe God has revealed himself generally in the natural world, and specifically through his word to Israel's prophets, (recorded in the Old Testament), and then in the historical person of Jesus Christ, (recorded in the New Testament documents). We consider both testaments dependable and authoritative, informing both faith and practice, and the principal way in which God by his Spirit, speaks to us today
We believe in both the unique dignity of human beings as created in God's image, but also in their historic fall into sin and out of favour with God. We believe this the one truth Christians don't need to prove, accounting as it does for the hundreds of millions of lives lost through ethnic cleansing, war and humankind's destructiveness towards its own - making the last century the bloodiest on record.
We believe however, that humankind's biggest problem is not the effects of sin upon itself, but the judgement passed upon it by a holy God. This judgement, Jesus was insistent, will come to pass with universal and devastating effect. Indeed, many see in the present disordered state of the human and natural world a portent of this future judgement.
We believe that despite the fallenness of humankind, and its bleak prospects, God in love has given us the greatest reason for optimism. He has acted in history in the coming, living, dying and rising again of Jesus Christ, to rescue fallen humanity and establish his Kingdom on earth. This rescue consists of Christ living the life for us we have all failed to, then dying the death we all deserve to, and rising again to gift each life that receives him as Lord, with forgiveness and the inner presence, peace and power of his Spirit. It is the enjoyment of these gifts that define the people he inhabits, the Kingdom they inhabit, their efforts to serve him in the world, and the future he calls them to.
Much of what is believed by most Christians is absent from this account. However, if the whole of our bibles were distilled down into one sharp arrow that God has fired into the world, this message of Jesus Christ and the hope he offers is that arrow's sharpest point. It tells us that while in our natural condition we might understandably fear God, he has in fact given us grounds in Jesus Christ to trust, love, worship and serve him.
Central to Christ's own self-identity was his own preferred title, the Son of Man. Taken from promises made about him in the Old Testament book of Daniel, it describes one who will return to re-establish his kingdom fully and irreversibly in a renewed heaven and earth. This has remained the future hope of all believing people since Christ first promised it to us.
A prayer one can say in addressing Jesus and asking for the salvation he has won for us, might go like this.......
"Jesus, I am persuaded you are alive. I am also persuaded I need you, and the benefits of both your death and resurrection. Please forgive me my sins, and fill my life with your Spirit. Release me from the destructive behaviours of my past, that separated me from you, and empower me to live the life the Father deserves from me, and I was made to live. Thank you Jesus, me saviour and Lord; Amen"