Overview of SFC

Our Primary Objective

To be a Biblical church. We believe that God makes it clear in the Bible that Christians are to participate in a church — we need that for our health and growth; God needs that to accomplish his purpose. In the Bible the church is characterized as a "Body of Christ" and the character of that Body is revealed. Thus our primary goal is to become a true Body of Christ with all that that implies.

Our Diversity with Unity

Jesus attracted and included all kinds of people while holding fast to the basic fundamentals of God's purpose, plan and message. We, too, want to include and benefit from people and traditions from all the great denominations. We are, therefore, inter-denominational and try to be truly Christian but with no constraints that are not essential to that character. We have a simple Core of Belief. We also have a simple requirement for membership in our church. Whatever our differences, we are unified by having the same predominant fundamental beliefs and goals as well as by our love and appreciation for each other as fellow members of God's family. We find that our diversity gives us strength. Our different backgrounds, opinions, and skills are compounded by the Holy Spirit into growth and progress.

The Bible

As Christians we treasure the Bible as our source of knowledge about God and life. We know it is not a simple rule book and that individual passages can be interpreted in different ways and can be used wrongly. But we believe that God inspired the writers of the Bible and he inspires the faithful reader to discover the real truth. It reveals to us a history of God's dealings with mankind, his plan for our salvation, and his guidance for our living. This church especially promotes small-group Bible study because so many have found their greatest comprehension from such group interaction and Jesus has promised to be present when two or more gather in his name.

Our Mission

We see the mission of the church as four-fold and the required commitment for ourselves as individual Christians as having four dimensions. These four dimensions can be remembered by the four words: Message; Maturity; Ministry; Missions; or by the four words: Knowing; Growing; Serving; Sharing.

• Message: Central to the faith is understanding its message. So this church teaches the message and we concentrate on coming to know God (as He is revealed in Jesus Christ) and to know the Bible (its truths and message of redemption and reconciliation).
• Maturity: We want to grow individually to be more Christ-like, to become mature Christians. We seek to grow collectively as a "Body of Christ".
• Ministry: A third role of the church is to equip each of us to minister in Jesus' name. We seek to be equipped so we can serve those in need — locally and far away. We look to the church to prepare us to live our Christianity in all of our activities outside of the church so as to contribute to the reformation of our culture.
• Missions: We seek to share Christ, to communicate in word and deed the reconciling message of the Gospel to all people in our own country and also in other lands. We can't all go, but some can and the rest of us can support them.

Individually we have differing gifts and will make progress in these dimensions unequally. However, we each want to participate somewhat in each one and together we hope to accomplish all four in a balanced way, not neglecting any.

Our Leadership

We depend on both clergy and lay leaders. The clergy have a special role as our teachers and our counselors based on their education, Christian maturity and opportunity for study. The Senior Pastor is chief executive of the paid staff. However, the government of the church and the leadership of most activities is vested in the lay leaders and the laity is encouraged to be a part of the total ministry. We do not expect our leaders, clergy or lay, to be more perfect than our other members. However we do expect them to have a high level of personal commitment and believe that as they work together as a group, seeking diligently God's help, God will give them sufficient wisdom and strength to accomplish his plan for his church.

Our Worship Services

Although there are many facets to our life together, the Sunday morning services are the most important. We have four services that are distinct in aspects of style and their elements, yet share the common theme for the morning. Music is an important part of our worship. It is a way we can all participate in praise of our Lord. Praise and prayer comprise about half of our worship service; study and teaching the other half. It is important to us that the teaching is an exposition of a portion of the Bible revealing and explaining the truth of the scripture, not the human ideas of the teacher. We look to the teaching to help us understand how to live our daily lives in a way that is more pleasing to God.

Our Journey

We are growing toward the Lord. Some day we will be with him. All of our activities together are oriented toward helping each other in that journey. We know that we each stand at different levels of maturity, at different thresholds of growth. We are neither proud in our growth nor frustrated by our shortcomings because we know that he sees us as we are, accepts us completely, and has something better in store for us down the road.