Grace Presbyterian Church of St. Charles County is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The PCA is a denomination of nearly 1600 evangelical churches, and one of the fastest-growing denominations in the United States. As Presbyterians, we consider the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms to be a faithful explanation of what Scripture teaches. These are time tested documents, written by men who loved God, and who sought to bring some specificity to their understanding of the Scriptures. Some of our core beliefs can be found in shorter form, however, below.
As Christians we find our identity and understanding of our beliefs in the Bible—the collection of letters, histories, songs, and prophecies that make up the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that the Scriptures are fully ”inspired” by God—which means that we believe they are our loving and faithful Father's means of communicating His will for a full and abundant life to the people that He created.
We believe there is only One God, who has always existed as three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit — the Trinity. And we believe that He really did create the world and everything in it.
We believe that God's only Son, Jesus, was fully God and fully man, and that he came and lived, and suffered, and died just as the Old Testament had predicted. Jesus did this all on our behalf, in order to reconcile our relationship to God that was broken by our own selfishness and pride. Jesus paid the full penalty for our sins through his death on the cross, and then declared his victory over death when he was raised from the dead on the third day.
We believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. The greatest hope and purpose of our existence is to give praise and glory to God, and to live forever in His presence—and we believe that personal trust and commitment to Jesus, and admittance of our own inability to pay the penalty for our sinful actions is the way to secure this promised Hope.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is God's gift to everyone who calls upon the name of Jesus, and works in us to conform and transform us to a more Christ-like life. The Spirit gives us gifts and abilities to use for the sake of others, and He provides assurance of the Hope that is waiting for us…even when things seem hopeless.
We believe that Jesus Christ sits as the head of the Church, and that the church is made up of all those people from every tongue and tribe and nation around the world who trust in Jesus. We believe that the Church is a family that God created to weep with those who weep, and laugh with those who laugh —for our mutual encouragement, and for our accountability. The Church is charged with the task of living out and speaking the truth of Jesus through our love and self-sacrifice—because Jesus first loved us.
Join the Conversation