“There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to one hope when you were called;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:14-17)

At Greenfield our teaching and life together are centred on our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and based on the Holy Bible. The Scriptures serve as our primary authority for belief and practice. But even more than our authority for what we believe, its story is our story. The Bible shapes our imagination, forms our identity. As Christ followers we are part of the people of God; we are heirs of God’s promise to Abraham; we are citizens of the Kingdom of God who are called to join God on mission to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom.

• Beyond this, we hold to the historic expression of the Christian faith found in The Apostles’ Creed.
• In addition, as part of the North American Baptist Conference (NAB), we also affirm the NAB Statement of Beliefs.

Another important distinctive of our Baptist heritage is the idea of individual responsibility (also referred to as “soul liberty” or “individual competency”). We believe that ultimately we will all have to stand before God as individuals and make an accounting of our lives (see Romans 14; 2 Corinthians 5:10; James 4:12). Thus, we don’t understand our Statement of Beliefs as creedally binding, but rather as our agreed starting place for theological reflection.

Furthermore, in our life together, we believe it is sometimes necessary to distinguish between essentials and “disputable matters” (Romans 14:1-15:13). Essentials are those beliefs which we consider essential to discipleship, such as the Lordship of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, etc., while disputable matters are those things which we consider important to the faith, but we recognize that not all agree with them. With these grey areas we believe it is important to follow the teaching of the Apostle Paul where he says, do not judge, but “accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Rom 15:7). There is a famous saying — attributed to a number of different individuals — that is instructive: “In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” That, in a nutshell, expresses our perspective about believing together as a community of faith.