About
What We Believe at New Hope about Jesus, the Bible, and the Church
beliefs & values
Our beliefs
Our Purpose
Our purpose is to be a blessing to our neighbors and the world by connecting people to Jesus through worship, connecting people through community, and connecting people to ministry through service.
Scripture
All Scripture is self-attesting and Truth, requiring our unreserved submission in all areas of life. The infallible Word of God, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is a complete and unified Witness to God's redemptive acts culminating in the incarnation of the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible, uniquely and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks. On this sure foundation we affirm these additional essentials of our faith.
GOD
We believe in one God, the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To Him be all the honor, glory, and praise forever!
Jesus
Jesus Christ, the living Word, became flesh through His miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit and His virgin birth. He Who is true God became man, united in one Person forever. He died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins according to the Scriptures. On the third day He arose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, where, at the right hand of the Majesty on High, He now is our High Priest and Mediator.
Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit has come to glorify Christ and to apply the saving work of Christ to our hearts. He convicts us of sin and draws us to the Savior. Indwelling our hearts, He gives new life to us, empowering and imparting gifts to us for service. He instructs and guides us into all truth and seals us for the day of redemption.
salvation
Being estranged from God and condemned by our sinfulness, our salvation is wholly dependent upon the word of God's free grace. God credits His righteousness to those who put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation and thereby justifies them in His sight. Only those who are born of the Holy Spirit and receive Jesus Christ become children of God and heirs of eternal life.
the church
The true Church is composed of all persons who, through saving faith in Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, are united together in the body of Christ. The Church finds her visible, yet imperfect, expression in local congregations where the Word of God is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered in their integrity, where scriptural discipline is practiced, and where loving fellowship is maintained. For her perfecting, she awaits the return of her Lord.
end times
Jesus Christ will come again to the earth--personally, visibly, and bodily--to judge the living and the dead, and to consummate history and the eternal plan of God. "Even so, come Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20)
the gospel
The Lord Jesus Christ commands all believers to proclaim the gospel throughout the world and to make disciples of all nations. Obedience to the Great Commission requires total commitment to "Him who loved us and gave Himself for us." He calls us to a life of self-denying love and service. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
These Essentials are set forth in greater detail in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
We are a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Our Values
Gospel centrality
The Gospel is the central teaching of Christianity — the lens through which all other elements must be understood.
Says Tim Keller on this topic, "The gospel is the central element in the Christian life and continually renews the believer and the Church…Christian life is a process of renewing every dimension of our life—spiritual, psychological, corporate, social—by thinking, hoping, and living out the 'lines' or ramifications of the gospel."
New Hope is committed to becoming "in line" with the gospel in all of its thinking and practices.
Bless and do not curse
To bless someone is to commit resources and powers at our disposal to their flourishing. It is what Jacob asked of God at the Jabbok, and what a suitor traditionally asked of a girl's father: not permission, but partnership. To curse is the opposite: to commit those same resources and powers against them. A blessing is a prophetic taste of the new life we have in Christ. A curse makes life a living hell for the one cursed.
God blessed Abraham so that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3), and that promise is fulfilled in Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3-14). Blessing is our identity first, and therefore our assignment. We bless because we have been blessed. It is why the church has deacons.
New Hope is committed to being a church that blesses and does not curse. It sounds like a rule you would give a child. Ours is a contentious age, an age that has learned to define itself by what it opposes. To such an age, this will sound like too small a thing to build a life on. It is not. It is the rubric that directs the whole of the Christian life.
Cultivating wisdom and maturity
Wisdom is taking the Christianity we have been taught and using it to navigate matters of real life in a way that blesses and drives flourishing for all parties involved. It is different from obedience in that it often involves synthesizing various Biblical principles and bringing them to bear on situations where there don't seem to be clear rules or laws.
New Hope is committed to being a place where wisdom and maturity can be nurtured and cultivated, so that we can think Christianly about the issues before us in our respective lives.
Radical hospitality
Hospitality is graciously offering time, space, and resources to people who are in need of safety and refuge so as to offer them a respite from the chaos of life. If Grace is showing blessings and benefits that are normally reserved for friends and family, then gracious hospitality is showing that same hospitality to strangers and even enemies. We are to be cities of refuge (Numbers 35:6-14), a place for those who feel rejected and unworthy to participate in community and to find justice.
Jesus is the friend of sinners; therefore, we are to be friends with the outcast and sinners. We find our justice and justification in the gracious hospitality we find IN HIM.
Worship in spirit and in truth
Worship is an act of service in which we swear fealty to God as King. It is not merely music, and it is not a performance to be watched. Nor is it primarily about personal intimacy with God. Its goal is shalomic unity — taking people who would otherwise have nothing in common and making them one. This is why there are no spectators. The high point of the service is not the sermon but the priestly work of the believers together.
New Hope is committed to worship in Spirit and in Truth — worship that so fosters God's presence and unity among us that a stranger who walks through our doors might fall to his knees and say that God is truly among us.
Multi-generational church community
New Hope is committed to being a multigenerational church. Biblical faith has always been transmitted from one generation to the next.
But generations are not only conduits. Where generations are pitted against one another, we need to see ourselves more like covenantal partners. Each has lived through an era the others have not, and each carries wisdom the others need to navigate the era at hand. We need all of them.
A church of one generation cannot do this. It is also always one generation from extinction. As EPC pastor Valdir Reis of Closer to God Church in New York puts it, a church with no sound of crying children has no future.
