Welcome
Bellefield is a special place, and it’s a real joy to serve the Lord here as the pastors of this unique community. If you’d like to learn more about who we are as a congregation, what we believe, and how we seek to live as those who have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, then take some time to look around our website and, of course, please join us for worship and fellowship.
What We Believe
Our denominational identity
Bellefield is a congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). The EPC is unique among American Presbyterian denominations with our self-conscious attempt to balance essential and non-essential matters within a confessional framework. We are unified in our commitment to the essentials of the historic Christian faith taught in the Bible, but allow liberty of conscience on those matters which are not so plain in—or central to—the Bible’s teaching.
Our theological identity
The EPC is a confessional body, meaning that we have a written confession of faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith, while subordinate to Scripture, is our standard of doctrine. The “Essentials of Our Faith” is a statement that expresses historic Christian beliefs common to all true believers and churches throughout the world. Each of these documents serve important and harmonious purposes within the EPC. They are not alternative statements of truth, nor are they competitive statements of truth. The Westminster Confession of Faith preserves our commitment to the historic orthodoxy of the Reformed Faith. ”Essentials of Our Faith” preserves our commitment to historic evangelicalism.
On Reconciliation
Grounded in Scripture, and informed by ‘The Essentials’ and the Westminster Confession, we also hold to following conviction about reconciliation:
Sin has distorted the nature of all of creation, and reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel and of our lives as disciples. As Scripture says, “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19). In Jesus Christ we find reconciliation with God. Through the work of the Spirit, we pursue reconciliation with one another. This bears witness to the ongoing work of Jesus Christ, through whom God will one day reconcile all things to himself (Colossians 1:20). As Jesus builds his kingdom through Word and Spirit, we rejoice in the promised day when all things will be made new in Christ.
This is how Bellefield understands The Lord’s Supper, Baptism, and Stewardship.