Vineyard Churches (AVC)
Association of Vineyard Churches
Statement of Faith
As evangelicals, the Bible is our final authority for faith and
practice. Therefore, the statements that follow reflect our best
attempt to understand and live out biblical precepts. Upon further
reflection, greater biblical insight, or increased wisdom through
experience, these statements could be revised. Until such a time,
the Association of Vineyard Churches Board of Directors has formally
adopted this document as our official statement of faith as of
the Board meeting of November 1994. The official Association of
Vineyard Churches Statement of Faith reads as follows:
- WE BELIEVE that God is the Eternal King. He is an infinite
unchangeable Spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, goodness, justice,
power, and love. From all eternity He exists as the One Living
and True God in three persons of one substance, the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory.
- WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom is everlasting. From His throne,
through His Son, His eternal Word, God created, upholds, and governs
all that exists, the heavenly places, the angelic hosts, the universe,
the earth, every living thing and mankind. God created all things
very good.
- WE BELIEVE that Satan, originally a great, good angel, rebelled
against God, taking a host of angels with him. He was cast out
of God's presence and, as a usurper of God's rule established
a counter-kingdom of darkness and evil upon the earth.
- WE BELIEVE that God created mankind in His image, male and
female, for relationship with Himself and to govern the earth.
Under the temptation of Satan, our original parents fell from
grace, bringing sin, sickness, and God's judgement of death to
the earth. Through the fall, Satan and his demonic hosts gained
access to God's good creation. Creation now experiences the consequences
and effects of Adam's original sin. Human beings are born in sin,
subject to God's judgement of death and captive to Satan's kingdom
of darkness.
- WE BELIEVE that God did not abandon His rule over the earth
which He continues to uphold by His providence. In order to bring
redemption, God established covenants which revealed His grace
to sinful people. In the covenant with Abraham, God bound Himself
to His people Israel, promising to deliver them from bondage to
sin and Satan and to bless all the nations through them.
- WE BELIEVE that as King, God later redeemed His people, by
His mighty acts, from bondage in Egypt and established His covenant
through Moses, revealing His perfect will and our obligation to
fulfill it. The law's purpose is to order our fallen race and
to make us conscious of our moral responsibility. By the work
of God's Spirit, it convicts us of our sin and God's righteous
judgement against us and brings us to Christ alone for our salvation.
- WE BELIEVE that when Israel rejected God's rule over her as
King, God established the monarchy in Israel and made an unconditional
covenant with David, promising that his heir would restore God's
kingdom reign over His people as Messiah forever.
- WE BELIEVE that in the fullness of time, God honored His covenant
with Israel and His prophetic promises of salvation by sending
His only Son Jesus into the world. Conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary, as fully God and fully man in one
person. He is humanity as God intended us to be. Jesus was annointed
as God's Messiah, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, inaugurating
God's kingdom reign on earth, overpowering the reign of Satan
by resisting temptation, preaching the good news of salvation,
healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. Gathering
His disciples, He reconstituted God's people as His Church to
be the instrument of His kingdom. After dying for the sins of
the world, Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day, fulfilling
the convenant of blessing given to Abraham. In His sinless, perfect
life Jesus met the demands of the law and in His atoning death
on the cross He took God's judgement for sin which we deserve
as law-breakers. By His death on the cross He also disarmed the
demonic powers. The covenant with David was fulfilled in Jesus'
birth from David's house, His Messianic ministry, His glorious
ressurection from the dead, His ascent into heaven and His present
rule at the right hand of the Father. As God's Son and David's
heir, He is the eternal Messiah-King, advancing God's reign throughout
every generation and throughout the whole earth today.
- WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in
Jesus Christ and that He is our abiding Helper, Teacher, and Guide.
We believe in the filling or empowering of the Holy Spirit, often
a conscious experience, for ministry today. We believe in the
present ministry of the Spirit and in the exercise of all the
biblical gifts of the Spirit. We practice the laying on of hands
for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing, and for recognition
and empowering of those whom God has ordained to lead and serve
the Church.
- WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors
of Holy Scripture so that the Bible is without error in the original
manuscripts. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New
Testaments as our final and absolute authority, the only infallible
rule of faith and practice.
- WE BELIEVE the whole world is under the domination of Satan
and that all people are sinners by nature and choice. All people
therefore are under God's just judgement. Through the preaching
of the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the work
of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates, justifies, adopts, and sanctifies
through Jesus by the Spirit all who repent of their sins, and
trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. By this they are released
from Satan's domain and enter into God's kingdom reign.
- WE BELIEVE in the one, holy, universal Church. All who repent
of their sins and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior are regenerated
by the Holy Spirit and form the living Body of Christ, of which
He is the head and of which we are all members.
- WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ committed two ordinances to the
Church: water baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both are available
to all believers.
- WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom has come in the ministry of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that it continues to come in the ministry
of the Spirit through the Church, and that it will be consummated
in the glorious, visible and triumphant appearing of Christ -
His return to the earth as King. After Christ returns to reign,
He will bring about final defeat of Satan and all of his minions
and works, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement and
the eternal blessing of the righteous and eternal conscious punishment
of the wicked. Finally, God will be all in all and His kingdom,
His rule and reign, will be fulfilled in the new heavens and the
new earth, recreated by His mighty power, in which righteousness
dwells and in which He will be forever worshipped.
