our core beliefs;
– We believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and we confess our faith in Him as our Lord. We affirm the need for personal, experiential faith in Jesus Christ and formative discipleship into his likeness.
– We believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth reveals God to us. Because of this revelation, we confess faith in one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In affirming this, we acknowledge ourselves to be a part of the whole, world-wide, Christian Church.
– Our final authority in faith and practice is Jesus Christ, as revealed in Scripture and present among His people through the Holy Spirit. We recognise the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, interpreted under the leadership of the Holy Spirit and in the community of God’s people, as the primary authority for knowing God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.
– We understand the Church to be the People of God, the Body of Jesus Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We believe that God calls a local fellowship of believers into a shared life as a means of grounding His presence among His people within particular communities in the service of His mission to the world. These called, local communities of faith are nourished by worshipping, meeting around God’s Word (the Scriptures) and sharing together in the Lord’s Supper.
– Baptism is for believers only, in the triune name of God, into the Body of Jesus Christ. Where possible this is by immersion in water as a symbol of our becoming partakers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
– We believe that every believer in Jesus Christ is called to witness, with love and compassion, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We believe that the church is to share in the whole mission of God in the world.
– We affirm the freedom and responsibility of each local congregation to discover the purpose of Jesus Christ for its own life and work in the context of Jesus Christ’s call to His whole church.
– The discernment of this purpose will involve the whole congregation in seeking the mind of Jesus Christ under the appropriate exercise of the gift of leadership.
– We affirm the responsibility of each local congregation to engage, as part of the Body of Jesus Christ and with all seriousness, with its obligation to other congregations as partners in God’s mission. This is expressed through the joining together of local congregations in association and interdependence.
– We affirm the ‘priesthood of all believers’ in which the only mediator between God and humanity is Jesus Christ. We affirm the gift of the Holy Spirit to all God’s people, male and female, young and old, significant and seemingly insignificant, and so we recognise that all members of the Church have a role to play using their God-given gifts, skills and talents for the good of the Church and the community in the service of God’s mission.
– We recognise the responsibility of the Church to be a prophetic community of God’s grace in His world.
– We are a people of hope, believing that ultimately God will bring all things to ‘perfection’.
View / Download the AFCC Constitution 2017 (PDF)