Parkers Lake is an imperfect church of imperfect people, but there are a few things we covenant together to uphold as joint priorities.
We see the following core values as imperative to everything we do as a church and as standards to which we are held accountable.
We believe that God’s Word is without error and is our final authority for all we believe and do.
We insist on the Bible as the core curriculum for all of our ministries and expository preaching as the norm for our pulpit ministry.
We will seek to worship God in a way that joyfully celebrates his worth and gratefully recognizes his glorious plan of redemption.
We believe that this kind of worship will be the collective and passionate over-spill of each individual’s daily walk with God.
We emphasize God’s unconditional acceptance and full forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
We motivate people to serve Christ out of love and thankfulness because grace is a gift and service is a privilege.
We see prayer as our vital link to the God who knows and does all things.
We see God’s overarching sovereignty as a stimulus to prayer and not as a deterrent because we know that he delights in our dependence and frequently ordains prayer as the means to accomplishing his decreed ends.
WE INVEST in the lives of all whom God brings us through love, friendship, and fellowship whether their needs are spiritual, physical, or material.
WE EMBRACE the biblical model of marriage which involves one man and one woman committed to each other for life and we seek to strengthen marriages through biblical teaching and counseling.
WE STRENGTHEN families by teaching the biblical roles and supporting the spiritual nurture of the family as one of God’s dynamic means of perpetuating the Christian faith.
We take seriously Christ’s commission to “make disciples of all peoples” (Matthew 28:19-20) and believe that calling others to salvation in Christ and enlisting them to obediently follow Him is our standing assignment until His return. We understand this task to include four critical components:
EVANGELISM – We bring people to faith in Christ by means of Spirit-empowered outreach. In doing this we fully disclose the high cost of discipleship and call people to the kind of radical sacrifice that Christ called taking up our cross and following Him.
BAPTISM – We call on new converts to publicly identify with Christ and his church through believer’s baptism by immersion.
TEACHING – We encourage all believers in the life-long process of studying God’s Word with the view that knowing him will effect a loving and serving worship.
TRAINING – We seek to identify believers’ spiritual gifts and help them cultivate and use them for the mutual building up of the body of Christ.
We understand our responsibility to send church-planters and otherwise support disciple-making as a global effort.
