What We Believe

We believe the Holy Bible was written by men, divinely inspired, preserved by God, and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.

Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is and will remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, Who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

We believe and use the King James Version of the Bible for all matters of faith and practice. Our members are free to use the translation of their choice for their personal devotions, but we exhort them to make it the authority of their lives. As a church, we ask all teachers and leaders to use the King James Version both teaching and preaching. From time to time, we may have speakers, literature, videos, or other forms of teaching that use a different translation.

We believe there is one and only one living and true God. He is an infinite, intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful (omnipotent), never changing (immutable), present everywhere (omnipresent), all knowing (omniscient), all loving, and all wise. His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

God the Father

God the Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.

God the Son

Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin and without ceasing to be God. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead, physically, with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the Person Who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He, the Messiah, is the One Mediator, fully God, fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man through His blood. His premillennial return will be in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever-present Lord.

God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He inspired holy men of old to write the Scriptures. Through illumination He enables men to understand truth. He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He calls men to the Savior and effects regeneration. At the moment of regeneration, He baptizes every believer into the Body of Christ. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which they serve God through His church. He seals the believer unto the day of final redemption. His presence in the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

We believe man is the special, unique creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. In the beginning, man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice, man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan, man transgressed the command of God and fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity inherits a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. We believe that, without exception, every man and woman is totally depraved and needs to be born again.

We believe that Satan was once holy and enjoyed heavenly honors, but through pride and ambition to be above the Almighty, fell and drew after him a host of angels, and that he is now the malignant prince of the power of the air and the unholy god of this world. We hold him to be man’s great tempter, the enemy of God and His Christ, the accuser of the saints, the author of all false religions, the chief power behind all apostasy, the lord of the antichrist, and the author of all the powers of darkness – destined, however, for final defeat at the hand of God’s own Son and for the judgment of eternal justice in Hell, a place prepared for him and his angels.

We believe that salvation is the undeserved, freely offered gift of God. We believe that this gift is offered to all men by grace and received through a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that the precious blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross at Calvary has made a way for the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of those who believe in Him. We believe that through Jesus Christ, Who was dead, buried, raised on the third day, and ascended to the Father’s right hand, every believer has been eternally reconciled with God the Father. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

• Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace. Repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s Savior.
• Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings the believer into a relationship of peace and favor with God.
• Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life.
• Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.

We believe that the new birth is a one-time event even as physical birth is a one-time event. Eternal life is the result of being born into an eternal family. The words eternal, everlasting, and forever are used to describe our redemption, our life with God, and how long the Holy Spirit abides with us. Because our salvation is entirely God’s work, and our keeping is entirely God’s work, we can have full confidence that nothing “…shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The purpose of God’s grace is to redeem all of humankind from their fallen state through the payment of sin by the life, death, the blood and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He accomplishes this by regenerating, justifying, sanctifying, and glorifying all sinners who receive the Word of God, acknowledge their fallen state, ask for His forgiveness, and call upon His name by the work and convicting power of the Holy Spirit. This includes the freewill of man to receive or reject such grace. Those whom God has received in Christ will never fall away from the state of grace because the regenerated sinner has been born again by God’s grace into the family of God. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ. This may lead to God the Father chastening such believers to bring them back into a right relationship with Him. This may even include a premature death if no repentance is evident; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

We believe the New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes.

In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the offices of pastor and deacon are limited to men as qualified by Scripture. The New Testament speaks also of the church as the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.

Members of New Testament churches should cooperate with one another in carrying forward the missionary, educational, and benevolent ministries for the extension of Christ’s Kingdom, when such cooperation involves no violation of conscience or compromise of loyalty to Christ and His Word as revealed in the New Testament.

We believe Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the first act of obedience, after salvation, symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership. The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby believers, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming. The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance of Jesus Christ, to be administered with the elements of bread and fruit of the vine, and to be observed by His churches till the end of the world. It is in no sense a sacrifice, but is designed to commemorate His death, to confirm the faith and other graces of Christians, and to be a bond, pledge and renewal of their communion with Him, and of their church fellowship.

We believe, according to Scripture, it is the Lord’s desire for the local church to assemble regularly and consistently for worship, edification, evangelism, admonishment, equipping for service, giving, fellowship, and provoking one another to love and good works. We believe the local church should observe the ordinances of communion and baptism in commemoration and celebration of the death, burial, and triumphant resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and our new life in him. Believing it to be appropriate according to the Scriptures, we as a local body set aside the first day of the week for corporate worship in celebration of our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as did the early church.

We believe that the Scriptures, interpreted in their natural, literal sense, reveal divinely determined periods of time, dispensations or rules of life that define man’s responsibilities to God in successive ages. These dispensations are divinely ordered stewardships by which God directs man according to His purpose. Three of these dispensations – the law, the church, and the kingdom – are subjects of detailed revelation in Scripture.

The distinctions of dispensationalism:

1. The literal, grammatical, and normal interpretation of Scripture.
2. A consistent distinction between Israel and the church.
3. A clear distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God.
4. The ultimate plan and purpose of God is His Kingdom and Glory.

We believe in Heaven, the eternal home of the redeemed. We believe heaven to be the place where the saved will live forever in the eternal bliss and blessings of God. We believe in Hell, the Christ-less eternity for the lost, where there will be burning and tormenting for those without salvation who have refused to receive the Gospel and Jesus Christ. We believe that one day the redeemed will be raptured to unite with Christ and avoid the time of tribulation that will follow on the earth. We will then return with Christ during His Second Coming to the earth where we will reign with Him for one thousand years. At the conclusion of this, we believe that Hell, unbelievers, Satan and all the fallen angels shall be cast into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and forever.

We believe it is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations. This includes our local community, our state, our country, and all nations and people groups of the world. Missionary effort on the part of all rests thus upon a spiritual necessity of the regenerate life and is expressly and repeatedly commanded in the teachings of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ has commanded the preaching of the gospel to all nations. It is the duty of every child of God to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by verbal witness undergirded by a Christian lifestyle, by faithful giving to missions, and by other methods in harmony with the gospel of Christ.

We believe that Christians are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through effective Bible study and discipleship. This can be accomplished through many different venues such as personal quiet times and studies or collective group meetings such as Sunday School classes, Home Groups, Discipleship Classes or One-on-One Discipleship. The goal is to become a mature Christian that is able to take what is learned through such experiences and be able to teach others. By the church producing mature Christians, it strengthens the church in doctrine and godly living.

We believe God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are we owe to Him. As Christians, we have a spiritual debt to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship in our possessions. We are therefore under obligation to serve Him with our time, talents, and material possessions and should recognize all these as entrusted to us to use for the glory of God and for helping others. According to the Scriptures, Christians should contribute of our financial resources cheerfully, regularly, systematically, proportionately, and liberally for the advancement of the Redeemer’s cause on earth. Old and New Testament Scriptures teach that our giving should consist of a tithe and offerings given above the tithe.

We believe that the means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ. In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose all sin, including but not limited to racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society.

We believe that God has ordained and created all authority consisting of three basic institutions: 

1. the home
2. the church
3. the State.

Every person is subject to these authorities, but all (including the authorities themselves) are answerable to God and governed by His Word. We believe that civil government is of divine appointment and is to be obeyed with the exception only of things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is alone Lord of conscience. The State owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. A free church in a Free State implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.

We believe God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption. Because of our understanding of the biblical principles and our desire to follow them, we believe that marriage is a union between one naturally-born man and one naturally-born woman. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation. Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.

Since we believe that God sanctions only the union in marriage of a naturally-born man to a naturally-born woman, therefore this church sanctions only a ceremony compatible with those standards.

1.  Due to our belief in the biblical teachings about marriage, same-sex couples will not be married in any facilities or on any properties owned by the church.
2. Licensed and ordained ministers on staff at Decatur Baptist Church will not perform any same-sex marriages or civil unions whether on or off church-owned properties. Doing so would be grounds for termination. Licensed and ordained ministers who are members of Decatur Baptist Church, but are not on staff, will not be affirmed by Decatur Baptist Church to perform any same-sex marriages or civil unions. Doing so would be grounds for church discipline and/or removal from membership.
3.  No same-sex marriages or civil union gatherings, such as anniversaries or baby showers or participation in baby dedications, can take place on any properties of Decatur Baptist Church.

The Statement of Basic Beliefs does not exhaust the extent of our faith. The Bible itself is the sole authority and final source of all that we believe. We do believe, however, that the foregoing Statement of Basic Beliefs accurately represents the teaching of the Bible and, therefore, is binding upon all members. All literature used in the church shall be consistent with the Statement of Basic Beliefs. In all conflicts regarding interpretation of the Statement of Basic Beliefs, the pastor, pastoral staff, and deacons, on behalf of the church, have the final authority.