What We Believe

Preamble

As a church-based leadership ministry, Living Stones recognizes that God will ultimately hold the leadership of each local church responsible for their understanding of what the Scripture calls sound doctrine. We commit ourselves to respect that fully. Our heart is to unify the Body of Christ, not divide it. We subscribe to the spirit of the statement—“in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love.”
We are fully committed to what is sometimes called “Classical Evangelical Christianity”, that is, the core teachings of the Church that evangelical Christians have confessed through the ages. Those core beliefs were captured by the Nicene Creed (325 AD), the Athanasian Creed (500 AD), and more recently by the Lausanne Covenant (1974).
In the interests of your confidence in us, as assistants in the training of your present and future leaders, we felt it important however to include our Statement of Beliefs so that you know where we are coming from.

The Bible

We believe the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments (66 books in all), to be the infallible, divinely inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, and our final authority for all matters of Christian faith and practice to which it speaks.

The Trinity

We believe in one God, existing eternally as three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and that each person is fully God.

The Father

We believe that the Father is fully God; that His Fatherhood is eternal and personal and that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus and of all who believe in Christ.

The Son

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, the only eternal Son of God. He became incarnate, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary and lived a sinless life. He died on the Cross as the perfect sacrifice for sin, rose bodily from the dead and ascended into heaven, where he is now our High Priest and Advocate. We keenly anticipate his return as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The Holy Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit is fully God; that he dwells in every believer and seals them at conversion and by his baptism includes all believers in the Body of Christ. The Spirit gave gifts for the establishing of the church and continues to give gifts for the edifying of the church. He progressively transforms believers to become more like Jesus.

Humanity

We believe that men and women were created in the image of God; that Adam and Eve sinned and passed on a sinful nature to the human race; that all people are sinners by nature and by practice and that apart from God’s salvation, men and women are lost eternally.

Salvation and the Great Commission

We believe that salvation is initiated by the grace of God, purchased by the blood of Christ and appropriated by faith, apart from good works, and that all people who put their faith in Christ are justified and become God’s children.
We believe that the Great Commission, given by the Lord Jesus to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that Christ commanded, is the joyful privilege of the Church to the end of the age.

The Church

We believe that the Body of Christ is made up of all people whose trust is in the Lord Jesus and that local churches governed by elders are the visible expression of Christ’s Body here on earth.

The Future

We believe that Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly to establish his kingdom and reign on earth for a thousand years as King of Kings. At the end of this time, he will finally defeat all evil, and will usher in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the unjust and the just, the former to suffer eternal punishment and the latter to enjoy eternal life with God forever.