Our Essential Beliefs

What we believe matters. Our beliefs shape how we think, how we act, and how we live in relation to God and others in our world. As Protestants, our Christian Faith is rooted in the Bible, in the early Church and in the Reformation. These core beliefs express the beliefs we are united around and seek to live out in our daily lives:

1. With Christians everywhere, we worship the only true God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – who is both one essence and three persons.

2. We believe in the Holy Scriptures, the written Word of God, inspired, preserved and illuminated for us by the Holy Spirit. Relevant for all time, the Bible is the only infallible Word of God and our supreme source of truth for Christian beliefs and for how to live life.

3. Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly human. As to His divinity, He is the Son, the second person of the Trinity, being of one substance with the Father; as to His humanity, He is like us in every way but sin, having both a human soul and a human body.

4. No part of human life is untouched by sin. Our desires are no longer trustworthy guides to goodness, and what seems natural to us no longer corresponds to God’s design. We are not merely wounded in our sin; we are dead, unable to save ourselves. And the present disordered state of the world, in which we are subject to misery and to evil, is not God’s doing, but is rather a result of humanity’s free, sinful rebellion against God’s will.

5. In union with Christ through the power of the Spirit we are brought into right relation with the Father, who receives us as His adopted children. Jesus Christ is the only Way to this adoption, the sole path by which sinners become children of God, for He is the only-begotten Son, and it is only in union with Him that a believer is able to know God as Father.

6. Through His regenerating and sanctifying work, the Holy Spirit grants us faith and enables holiness, so that we may be witnesses of God’s gracious presence to those who are lost.

7. Jesus teaches us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. There is no part of human life that is off limits to the sanctifying claims of God. We affirm that all our affections and desires must be brought under God’s authority. Progress in holiness is an expected response of gratitude to the grace of God, which is initiated, sustained, and fulfilled by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

8. The ministries of the church reflect the three-fold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king – reflected in the church’s ordered ministries of teaching elders, deacons, and ruling elders. We affirm that men and women alike are called to all the ministries of the Church, and that every member is called to share in all of Christ’s offices within the world beyond the church.

9. We celebrate the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which are visible signs of God’s gracious work in our lives. In Baptism we experience the forgiveness of our sins and our acceptance into the Body of Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, we remember God’s unconditional love for us and the new relationship we now have with God has through the death of Jesus on the cross. All who put their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are welcome to celebrate the Lord Supper with us.

10. Marriage is between a man and a woman as established by God at the creation and affirmed by Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry.

For more, see ECO’s confessional standards here.

Our Beliefs