What we believe

When Living Hope Christian Church formed in 2025, we did what most churches do: we put together a statement of faith containing the beliefs that are important to us. (view old Statement of Faith here)

At some stage the question arose: If Jesus is the Head of the church, shouldn’t He be the One making important decisions about things like what we believe and who can belong? Clearly, yes.

As a result of this realisation, we embarked on an important project: to identify and understand the beliefs and practices that the New Testament identifies as being fundamental to the Christian faith.

What follows is a summary of our findings accompanied by a series of documents that provide supporting evidence for our conclusions. If you want to see a more detail explanation for our process and findings, check out our Christian Fundamentals and Unity document here.

Essential Christian Beliefs

• Believe in God

▪ God exists

▪ God has given us eternal life through Jesus

• Believe in the good news of the kingdom of God:

▪ The grace of God, the power of God, the righteousness of God, the glory of God.

▪ The kingdom of God has drawn near.

• Believe in the good news of the name of Jesus Christ:

▪ Jesus came in the flesh as Son of God and Son of David, our Saviour, Christ the Lord

▪ Jesus died for our sins and rose again and will be the Judge of the living and the dead.

• Believe that through Jesus we:

▪ Are saved, forgiven, justified, and born again.

▪ Experience peace, great joy, the riches and glory of Jesus, a hope laid up in heaven, and eternal life in the age to come.

Essential for Becoming a Christian

• See, hear, and understand

• Repent and turn

• Believe, receive, enter, and confess Jesus

• Be born again, and start a new life.

Essential for Living as Christian

• Believe, receive

• Honour God, abide in Jesus, walk in the Spirit

• Repent, be obedient, do good, love others

• Make sacrifices, overcome, endure, and be ready for Jesus’ return.

Fatal to Living as Christian

• Dishonour God, reject Jesus, fall away, do evil, love darkness.

• Be dishonest, hypocritical

• Be proud, selfish, drunk, sexually immoral

• Be unloving, divisive, malicious and violent.

Fundamentals of Christianity

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