Our Beliefs
The Southern Baptist Convention has prepared, and South Reno Baptist Church has adopted, a statement of generally held convictions called The Baptist Faith and Message. It serves as a guide to understanding who we are and what we believe. The topics provided here only serve as a brief, partial summary of our beliefs. The full, detailed document is located at the previous link.
The Bible
God
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired 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.
There is one and only one living and true God. The eternal God reveals Himself to us in three persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
God the Father
God the Son
God as 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.
Jesus 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, He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin.
God the Holy Spirit
Man
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. He exalts Christ. He convicts of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.
Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the crowning work of His creation. By his free choice, man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created mankind in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
Salvation
God's Purpose of Grace
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense, salvation includes regeneration, sanctification, and glorification.
Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.
The Church
Baptism and the Lord's Supper
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is two things. First, it is a local body of baptized believers who are associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the Gospel, seeking to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This church is an autonomous body. Second, the New Testament speaks also of the church as the larger body of Christ, which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages.
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Jesus Christ. The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience where members of the church memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.
The Lord's Day
Last Things
The first day of the week is recognized as the Lord's Day. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion.
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly. The dead will be raised, and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell. The righteous will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
Evangelism and Missions
Education
It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations: to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by personal effort.
The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is to coordinate with the causes of missions and general benevolence. There should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the preeminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.
Stewardship
Cooperation
God is the source of all blessings, temporal, and spiritual; all that we have and are, we owe to Him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve Him with their time, talents, and material, possessions.
Christ's people should organize associations and conventions as may best secure cooperation for the great objects of the Kingdom of God. Such organizations have no authority over one another or over the churches. Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations.
Again, the topics that were previously stated here serve only as a brief and partial summary of our beliefs. The full, detailed document is available here: The Baptist Faith and Message.