And What We Believe
At HOPE Church Raleigh, we are passionate followers of Christ. We believe our purpose can best be summarized with the words:
Worship
When Jesus was asked what the greatest Commandment was, He stated, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
We were created to worship and love God. The first 4 of the 10 Commandments are really about the worship of God. The Psalmist repeatedly states:
“Worship the LORD God”
“Exalt the LORD God”
“Praise the LORD God with all your heart forever!”
We are a community of faith that Worships the LORD God. Using the word “Worship” points us first to HIM.
Grow
We are to grow in faith. Without growth and knowledge of who God/Christ is and what His WORD says, we will be as the Apostle Paul states, “like grass blowing in the wind.”
We will not have an answer for the World and it’s persecution of our faith. We must grow in knowledge and truth.
In Proverbs we are told to “obtain the knowledge of God, so that, we can discern life’s journey ahead.”
Serve
We are called to serve. This encompasses the great commission.
Out of our service and our outreach, we proclaim Him who died for all.
In our outreach, we witness to Christ and His work on the cross.
We set a witness of Him to the world, so that as we serve Him in the world, the Holy Spirit might work through our witness as Paul states in Romans.
About the EPC
We are a member of the global
movement of Evangelical Presbyterian Churches
Our name describes us well. The EPC is both evangelical and Presbyterian. We are evangelical in our zeal for the gospel, as well as evangelism, missions, and living obediently as followers of Jesus. At the same time, we are rooted deeply in the Protestant Reformation and especially the theological and pastoral work of John Calvin. We embrace the Westminster Confession of Faith as our doctrinal standard, and the rule of spiritually mature elders linked together regionally as the best way to guide local congregations.
When the EPC started in 1981, we determined that we would not disagree on the basic essentials of the Christian faith, but on anything that was not essential-such as the issue of ordaining women as officers or practicing charismatic gifts-we would give each other liberty. Above all, we committed ourselves to loving each other and not engaging in quarrels and strife. The result is that when we get together in our regional and national meetings, we spend most of our time in worship and fellowship and almost none in arguing with each other.
The EPC consists of more than 600 churches with nearly 160,000 members. We have a world missions program with a priority on sending missionaries to unreached people groups. We are eager to plant churches across the United States and especially in urban communities and college towns. Our desire is that every one of our congregations will be an outpost of the Kingdom, with every member viewing himself or herself as a missionary on a mission.
From the beginning, we have been a movement of congregations that take seriously the Bible, the theology of the historic confessions of the faith, and the evangelical fervor of the founders of American Presbyterianism. We envision our local churches to be evangelical and Presbyterian; hence our name.
We affirm that the Bible is God’s inspired and infallible Word, and that it contains eternal truth that speaks with authority to our life, doctrine, and mission (2 Timothy 3:16). To ensure that the ideals of faith are easily understood but remain foundational, our core belief is contained in a concise list of essentials. We are Reformed in our understanding of the Bible, which means we aim to be confessional.
The Constitution of the EPC consists of the Westminster Confession of Faith (including the Larger and Shorter Catechisms), the “Essentials of our Faith,” and the Book of Order (comprised of The Book of Government, The Book of Discipline, and The Book of Worship). Of these, we have one confessional standard: the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. All these documents are subordinate to Scripture, which is “the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks.”