values
Our Foundational Values
First, the list…
1. God-Centeredness
2. Built on and Saturated with the Word of God
3. Expositional Preaching
4. Equipping Christians
5. The Combination of Head and Heart
6. Pursuing Joy in God
7. All of Life as Worship
8. Prayer Saturated
9. Radical Going and Sending
10. Commitment to the Local Body of Believer
11. Servant Leadership
12. Biblical Church Discipline
And now, the list again with some fuller descriptions (more to come, so keep checking back!)…
1. God-Centeredness
I suppose it seems obvious that a Christian would describe himself or herself, or a church would describe itself, as “God-centered.” Kids enjoy candy. Spring is refreshing. You know: obvious. All Christians and all churches are “God-centered,” right? Maybe not.
It seems that many are willing to be God-centered as long as God is man-centered. One of the tests of how God-centered we are is whether or not we joyfully confess with the Scriptures that God Himself is radically God-centered; that, at the center of God’s affections, at the center of His purposes, is His name, His holiness, His glory.
John Piper (Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church) puts it this way: “The acid test of biblical God-centeredness – and faithfulness to the gospel – is this: Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever? Does your happiness hang on seeing the cross of Christ as a witness to your worth, or as a way to enjoy God’s worth forever?”
Consider the following questions: Why did God create us? (Isaiah 43:6-7). Why did God choose a people for Himself and make Israel His possession? (Jeremiah 13:11). Why did God rescue them from bondage in Egypt? (Psalm 106:7-8). Why did God use His sovereign power to bring back His people from exile after punishing four generations of sin? (Isaiah 48:9, 11; Ezekiel 36:22-23, 32). Why did God elect and predestine His children, the saints? (Ephesians 1:3-6). Why did Jesus Christ, come to earth and to His final decisive hour? (John 17:1). What is the ultimate point of Christian growth? (Philippians 1:9-11). Why will Jesus come again in the great day of consummation? (2 Thessalonians 1:9-10).
From beginning to end, the driving impulse of God’s heart is to be praised for His glory. His unwavering purpose in all that He does is to exalt the honor of His name and to be marveled at for His grace and power. God is the blazing sun at the center of all reality. Everything revolves around Him. And, as the most valuable and glorious being that exists, God is LOVING, not conceited, when He calls us to worship Him, because He’s offering us the one thing that will make us the most happy forever: Himself.
The God-centeredness of God is crucial to rightly understanding the gospel, the love of God in the gospel, the Christian life, and all of reality. At FBC we seek to be captivated by this, captured by it, and to embrace this truth, this reality, and to feel in this, the love of God.
2. Built on and Saturated with the Word of God
3. Expositional Preaching
Mark Dever (9 Marks, Capitol Hill Baptist Church) has written: “If a healthy church is a congregation that increasingly displays the character of God as his character has been revealed in his Word, the most obvious place to begin building a healthy church is to call Christians to listen to God’s Word. God’s Word is the source of all of life and health. It’s what feeds, develops, and preserves a church’s understanding of the gospel itself.”
The kind of preaching you’ll find at First Baptist Church is what is often referred to as “expository” or “expositional” preaching. These are fancy words that simply mean ‘exposing’ the meaning of the biblical text considered. This is usually done week after week, as the church journeys through books of the Bible together.
Our steady diet each Sunday is the Bible itself, and whole books of the Bible, for as long as it takes to work our way through them.
[Bible texts for further study: 1 Corinthians 1:21; Nehemiah 8:8; Acts 20:26-27]
4. Equipping Christians
5. The Combination of Head and Heart
The Scriptures call for deep-thinking and deep-feeling Christians. Both emotions and thinking are crucial in the Christian life; both head and heart are needed. We at FBC strive in all our preaching and teaching and corporate worship to avoid two extremes: emotionless intellectualism on the one hand, and uncritical emotionalism on the other.
If we neglect the disciplines of the mind we will unknowingly drift into all sorts of doctrinal error and dishonor God who desires to be known in truth. If we neglect the emotions of the heart, the affections, spiritually we will be the walking dead, no matter how right our doctrine. God is not honored by either extreme. Truth without affections produces cold, dead orthodoxy. Affections without truth produces empty passion and can cultivate flaky and fluffy people who reject the discipline of rigorous thought and study over what God has communicated in His Word.
Therefore, by God’s grace, we desire to strive for light in the mind and heat in the heart. More specifically, we want our hearts set on fire by what we know and come to know about God in Christ. As John Stott has written, we want to strive to have a Christianity and a life together as a church that is a “warm devotion set on fire by truth.” Light in the mind, heat in the heart. That’s Christianity.
[Bible texts for further study: 2 Timothy 2:7; Proverbs 2:1-11; Romans 12:1-2; Psalm 100:1ff; Matthew 24:32; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Matthew 13:44; Romans 10:2; 1 Corinthians 14:20; 1 Peter 1:13-16]
6. Pursuing Joy in God
7. All of Life as Worship
8. Prayer Saturated
9. Radical Going and Sending
10. Commitment to the Local Body of Believer
11. Servant Leadership
12. Biblical Church Discipline