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Statement of Faith - El Segundo Community Church

Our Faith was revealed by the Lord Jesus. We are convinced He is God's Son and Israel's Messiah (Christ) and the Savior of the world (John 1:14-17, 3:16-17; Acts 2:36).

The revelation of our faith is contained in the New Testament (or Will) and is applicable to all mankind. The New Testament supersedes the Old and contains the rule of faith and practice by which we seek to live (Hebrews 8:13, 10:9-10). 

The faith by which we seek to live is personal. That is each person must have such faith himself. Trust which is an integral part of that faith must be in the person of Jesus Himself (John 3:16-17).

To conceive of saving faith apart from obedience is to us nonsense (James 2: 14-26).

The very heart of our faith involves belief in certain facts about Jesus. Those facts are that He identified with man, fully (Hebrews 2:14-18) and as God's only begotten and sinless Son died for the sins of the whole world, was buried, was raised the third day, and then was seen by many to be alive (I Corinthians 15:1-7; Hebrews 4:14-16). This righteous Son provides the righteousness that empowers the gospel we believe to save us (Romans 1:16-17; 3:20-26).

This is the good news. Death is not the last word on human existence; there will be a resurrection of all the dead (John 5: 19-20; Acts 14: 15). Death is followed by the resurrection and judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

The judgment is followed by eternal life or the second death (John 5:28-29, Rev. 20:4-15).

Here is the crucial fact about you. You have no reason not to be sure about your future. If you accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as the one who died to save you, God will give you power to become His child (John 1:12). Then if your faith has the element of genuine trust, you will repent of your sins and be immersed into Christ (Acts 2:36-38), receiving the Holy Spirit who sustains, supplies, and expands the work of God through the message of good news about Jesus' life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and return. If this is your experience, you have become God's child (Galatians 3:26-27). In this relationship you are secure if you continue faithfully (1 Corinthians 15:1-2; Acts 2:41-42).

Are we Catholic or Protestant? Neither and both. How can that be? Protest can be used in two senses. It can be used in the sense of testifying for something, and we want to do that for all that Christ commands. This word can also mean to oppose something, and we want to oppose all that Christ condemned. This is what we mean by His will (the teachings of the New Testament) being our only rule of faith and practice (Matthew 15:1-9). We are catholic in the sense that we believe in one God and Father of all, one Lord Jesus Christ, one body, filled with one Spirit, composed of all those who possess the one faith and have experienced the one baptism and live in the one hope of eternal life. According to Ephesians 4:1-5 in the context of the entire letter to the church in Ephesus these matters were to be in the universal (catholic) experience and expression of all God's people everywhere.

We seek to be simply Christian, and we desire no identification as Catholic or Protestant in the denominational sense.