We accept the Scriptures as our supreme and final authority, and hold the following as our understanding of Bible doctrine.
The Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, our supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and practice. The articles below represent our understanding of what Scripture teaches. Hover over any scripture reference to read the verse.
What follows is what this church believes, written without the theological vocabulary. If a belief surprises you or raises a question, we are always happy to talk. Reach out any time.
We believe the whole Bible, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, is verbally inspired by God, inerrant in the original writings, and the supreme, sufficient, and final authority in all matters of faith and life. The Holy Spirit bears witness in the hearts of believers, assuring them of Scripture's divine authority. All Scripture is God-breathed, finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and was given for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.
The Bible, all 66 books, is God's Word, not just a human document. It has no errors and is the final authority on everything it addresses. The Holy Spirit helps believers recognize this. Everything in the Bible points to Jesus Christ.
We believe the Godhead eternally exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, sharing the same nature, attributes, and perfections. God is holy, just, sovereign, eternal, self-existent, and self-sufficient, depending on nothing outside Himself for His existence or glory. He is immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent; and in His very nature He is love. He governs all things according to His sovereign will and for His own glory.
There is one God who exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are not three separate gods, and they are not three modes of one person. They are one God, three distinct persons. God is holy, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, and love itself. He is in control of everything.
We believe God the Father is the creator of heaven and earth, freely and supernaturally bringing all things into existence out of nothing for His own glory, and that He providentially governs all that He has made. Before the foundation of the world He chose a people for Himself in Christ, and through the redemption accomplished by His Son, His righteous wrath against sinners was fully satisfied.
God the Father made everything out of nothing. He is not a distant creator who stepped back. He actively governs everything He made. Before the world was created, He chose a people for Himself. His just anger against sin was fully dealt with through Jesus.
We believe the eternal Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, truly God and truly man, was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life of perfect obedience in our place, fulfilling the law on behalf of His people. He gave Himself as a substitutionary sacrifice for all whom the Father gave Him, the just for the unjust, bearing the Father's righteous wrath against sinners. He rose bodily from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and now intercedes for His people as our High Priest and Advocate. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Jesus is fully God and fully human. He was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross in the place of sinners, taking the punishment we deserved. He rose physically from the dead, ascended to heaven, and is there right now interceding for his people. He is coming back.
We believe the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is the agent of regeneration, giving new life to those dead in sin and effectually calling the elect to faith in Christ. He indwells all believers, uniting them to Christ and to one another as His body. He illumines the mind to understand Scripture, convicts of sin, sanctifies, guides, empowers, and intercedes for God's people, sealing them unto the day of redemption. We believe the miraculous sign gifts were temporary and have ceased with the closing of the apostolic age. We also believe the elders are called to pray over the sick and anoint with oil in the name of the Lord, trusting God who heals according to His sovereign will.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, not a force, a person. He is the one who gives new spiritual life to people. Every believer has the Holy Spirit living in them. He helps us understand the Bible, convicts us of sin, and grows us to be more like Jesus. We do not believe the miraculous gifts like tongues and prophecy are still active today, but we do believe God heals and that church elders should pray over the sick.
We believe God created humanity in His own image, male and female, for His glory and their flourishing. Adam, as the representative head of all humanity, sinned against God, and in him all people fell, inheriting both his guilt and a corrupt nature thoroughly defiled in mind, will, and affections. All people sin necessarily from this nature, are unable by any effort of their own to remedy their fallen state, and stand justly condemned before a holy God. Sin results in physical death, spiritual death, and eternal condemnation, from which no one can deliver himself.
God made people in his image, male and female, to know him and flourish. Adam sinned, and because he represented all of humanity, we all fell with him. Every person is born with a nature bent toward sin. We cannot fix this ourselves. Without God's intervention, the end of that road is death and judgment.
We believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and that no reformation of life, morality, culture, baptism, or ordinance can contribute to it in any degree. Because all people are dead in sin, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless born again, God granting a new heart and new life through the Holy Spirit working by His Word. Through faith in Jesus Christ, the sinner is fully and finally justified, forgiven of all sin and clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to his account. Those who are so justified are received into the family of God as adopted sons and daughters, co-heirs with Christ. We believe all whom God has regenerated will persevere in faith to the end, kept not by their own strength but by the power of God, and that none whom the Father has given to the Son will ever be lost.
The only way to be saved is through Jesus Christ. Not through being good, going to church, being baptized, or cleaning up your life. God gives new life to dead sinners. When a person trusts in Jesus, all their sin is forgiven and they are given Christ's perfect record before God. They are adopted into God's family. And once God saves someone, he keeps them. They will not ultimately fall away.
We believe that all who are united to Christ by faith pass immediately from spiritual death into spiritual life, justified from all things, fully forgiven, and accepted before the Father precisely as Christ Himself is accepted. In Him the believer is complete, lacking nothing that God requires, and this justification is instantaneous and final. The justified are also progressively sanctified by the Holy Spirit, growing in holiness and conformity to Christ throughout their lives, though sanctification is the necessary fruit of justification, never its ground. The believer is not required to seek a second work of grace or any subsequent experience to stand complete before God. All whom God has justified He will also glorify, and the believer may have genuine assurance of salvation on the basis of God's sure promise and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
The moment you trust in Christ, you are forgiven of everything and fully accepted before God. You do not need a second spiritual experience or a higher level of Christianity to be complete. God also works in believers over time to make them more like Jesus. That growth is real. It is the result of being saved, not the means of being saved. Everyone God saves, he ultimately glorifies.
We believe that all true believers are kept by God's power and shall persevere in faith to the end, for their security rests not on their own strength but on God's eternal purpose, the propitiatory blood of Christ, the nature of eternal life itself, the unending intercession of Christ at the right hand of the Father, and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit who seals them unto the day of redemption. No one is able to snatch them from the Father's hand. God will present every one of them faultless before His glory.
Once God saves you, you are secure. Your security is not based on how well you hold on. It is based on God holding you. Jesus is praying for you right now. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of your inheritance. Nobody can take you out of God's hand.
We believe it is the privilege of all who are born again to be assured of their salvation from the very day they trust in Christ. This assurance rests not on any sense of personal worthiness or feeling, but on the testimony of God in His written Word, the inward witness of the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and the fruit of the Spirit evident in a regenerate life. Though assurance may be strengthened or shaken by season, the foundation on which it rests, the finished work of Christ and the faithfulness of God, never changes.
You can know that you are saved. Not because you feel good enough, but because God's Word promises it and the Holy Spirit confirms it in your heart. Your feelings about your salvation may go up and down. The foundation of your salvation does not. Christ's work is finished and God is faithful.
We believe sanctification is the work of God's grace in three dimensions. Positionally, the believer is already set apart and complete in Christ, declared holy before God on the basis of Christ's finished work. Progressively, the believer is renewed by the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God, putting to death the deeds of the flesh and growing in conformity to Christ, not in their own strength but by the power of God who works in them both to will and to work. This growth is real but not without conflict, for the flesh wars against the Spirit until the end of life. Finally, at the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body, sanctification will be brought to completion, the believer glorified in soul and body, fully and forever conformed to the image of the Lord.
Being made holy happens in three ways. First, the moment you are saved you are declared holy before God, completely. Second, God works in you over the rest of your life to make you actually more like Jesus. That process is real but it involves struggle. Third, when Christ returns, the process is complete and you are fully transformed. Growing in holiness is not how you get saved. It is what happens because you are saved.
We believe God has administered His one plan of redemption across different periods of history, each marked by distinct revelation and responsibility. Though the form of God's dealings with mankind has varied across these ages, from promise, to law, to the fullness of grace in Christ, there is only one way of salvation in every age: by grace alone, through faith alone, in the God who reveals Himself and His provision for sin. The ground of salvation has always been the atoning work of Christ, whose sacrifice was decreed before the foundation of the world and applied by God both forward and backward across history. What changed across the ages was not the method of salvation but the content God had progressively revealed. Old Testament saints were saved by faith in the God who promised a Redeemer and who ordained blood sacrifice as a foreshadowing of that ultimate sacrifice. Since the advent of Christ, the full revelation of God's saving purpose has been disclosed, and the gospel now calls all people everywhere to faith in Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises of God find their yes and amen.
God has one plan of salvation running through all of history. The way he dealt with people looked different at different times. The Old Testament had the law and animal sacrifices, for example, but there has always been always been only one way to be saved: by trusting in God's provision for sin. Old Testament believers were saved by faith in the God who promised a Savior. We are saved by faith in the Savior who came. Christ's death covered both. The whole Bible is one story with one hero.
We believe God created an innumerable company of holy angels, personal and spiritual beings who serve before His throne and minister to His people. Lucifer, one of the highest of these creatures, sinned through pride and fell, drawing a multitude of angels with him into rebellion. These fallen angels, or demons, now serve under Satan in active opposition to God and His people, blinding the minds of unbelievers, accusing the saints, and seeking their destruction. Yet Satan is a created being operating only within the bounds God sovereignly permits, and his ultimate defeat is certain, judged at the Cross of Christ and destined for the lake of fire at the final judgment. The holy angels remain as ministering spirits, sent forth to serve those who are heirs of salvation.
God created angels, real spiritual beings. One of the highest, Lucifer, rebelled out of pride and took many angels with him. He became Satan, and those fallen angels became demons. They are real, active, and hostile to God's people. But Satan is not God's equal. He is a created being on a leash. His defeat was secured at the cross. Good angels still exist and serve God's people.
We believe the universal church is the whole company of the elect, the body and bride of Christ, gathered from every age under Him as the only head. This one people of God has existed from the beginning of the world and will be made complete at the end of the age. Within this one people, ethnic Israel holds a distinct and honored place, having been entrusted with the oracles of God and the covenants of promise. From Pentecost onward the Gentiles have been brought into covenant blessing through Israel's Messiah, and we believe God will yet move sovereignly among ethnic Israel so that, as the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, all Israel will be saved and God's promises to that people will be fulfilled. The universal church finds its visible expression in local churches, gathered assemblies of baptized believers, covenanted together under the lordship of Christ. A true local church is marked by the faithful preaching of God's Word, the right administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the exercise of loving biblical discipline. Each local church is self-governing under Christ, led by qualified elders, and exists for the worship of God, the edification of believers, and the proclamation of the gospel to the world.
The church is all of God's people across all of history, everyone who has ever trusted in him. Within that, Israel has a special and honored place and God still has plans for that nation. The church also shows up in real local congregations: groups of baptized believers gathering together under Christ. A real local church is marked by faithful Bible preaching, baptism, the Lord's Supper, and caring discipline. Each local church governs itself under Christ with qualified elders leading it.
We believe Christ instituted two ordinances for His church, baptism and the Lord's Supper, as outward signs and public means of testimony, to be observed until He returns. As ordinances of the church, they are entrusted to the local church and are to be administered under its authority and oversight within the gathered assembly of believers. While extraordinary circumstances may on occasion give rise to irregular administration, such cases are out of order and not to be encouraged or normalized.
Jesus gave the church two practices to observe: baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are not ways to earn salvation. They are outward signs of something inward, and public declarations of faith. They belong to the local church and should be done under the church's oversight in the gathered assembly.
Baptism signifies the believer's union with Christ in His death and resurrection, the cleansing of sin, and public commitment to follow Him as Lord. It is an outward declaration of an inward grace already received, not a means of salvation, not a work that contributes to justification, and not the instrument by which the Spirit regenerates. We practice baptism by immersion of those who have personally repented and trusted in Christ, recognizing this as the mode and subject most consistent with the New Testament and the witness of the early church. We hold this conviction with charity toward the many godly Christians across the centuries who, from sincere study of Scripture and love for Christ, have understood and practiced baptism differently. Baptism is the normal entrance into membership in the local church.
Baptism is a public declaration that you belong to Christ. It does not save you. It declares that you are already saved. We baptize by full immersion of people who have personally trusted in Jesus. We think this is what the New Testament teaches and what the early church practiced. We hold this with kindness toward sincere Christians who have reached a different conclusion. Baptism is normally the doorway into church membership.
The Lord's Supper is observed in remembrance of Christ's atoning death and as a proclamation of that death until He comes. The bread and cup are signs and memorials of His body and blood, not a sacrifice and not a physical presence, yet in faithful observance Christ truly feeds His people spiritually and they are nourished in their union with Him. The Lord's Supper is observed by baptized believers in good standing with the local church.
The Lord's Supper, communion, is a regular practice where we eat bread and drink from the cup to remember Christ's death and proclaim it until he returns. The bread and cup are symbols. Christ is not physically present in them. But when we take communion in faith, Christ genuinely feeds and nourishes us spiritually. It is for baptized believers who are in good standing with the church.
We believe in the personal, bodily, and premillennial return of Christ. He will come visibly in power and great glory, and at His coming the dead in Christ will be raised and the living saints caught up to meet Him. A period of great tribulation will precede His return to establish His millennial kingdom on earth. At death, believers pass immediately into the presence of Christ in conscious joy; unbelievers remain in conscious condemnation awaiting judgment. After the millennium, all the dead will be raised, the final judgment will take place, and Christ will deliver the kingdom to the Father. The saved will dwell with God forever in the new creation; the lost will be cast into the lake of fire, not annihilated, but in everlasting and conscious separation from God.
Jesus is coming back, physically, visibly, in power. Before he comes there will be a period of intense tribulation. When he comes, believers who have died will be raised and those still living will be caught up to meet him. He will reign on earth for a thousand years. After that, everyone who has ever lived will be raised for final judgment. Those who trusted in Christ will be with God forever in the new creation. Those who rejected him will face conscious, eternal separation from God, not annihilation, but real and lasting judgment.
In addition to our doctrinal statement, Medina Community Church affirms the following positions as grounded in Scripture and held with conviction.
We believe that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, designed by God from creation. It is a lifelong union, intended to reflect the relationship between Christ and His church. Husband and wife are equal in value and dignity before God, yet distinct in their roles, the husband called to lead, protect, and provide for his household with sacrificial love, and the wife called to submit to his leadership, nurturing and caring for the home and welcoming children as a gift from God. We do not recognize any other definition of marriage as consistent with Scripture.
Marriage is between one man and one woman. That is God's design from the beginning. It is a lifelong covenant, not a contract. Husband and wife are equally valuable before God but have different roles: the husband leads with sacrificial love, the wife submits to that leadership with dignity and strength. Children are a gift to be welcomed. We do not believe any other definition of marriage is consistent with the Bible.
We believe that sexual intimacy is God's gift, designed exclusively for a husband and wife within the covenant of marriage. Scripture is clear that fornication, adultery, homosexual conduct, bisexual behavior, incest, bestiality, the consumption of pornographic material in any form including visual media and written content, and any attraction or behavior directed toward minors all fall outside of God's revealed will and are contrary to His design for human flourishing. We affirm that God created humanity as male and female, and that biological sex is not separable from gender. Neither can be changed, redefined, or divorced from one's identity as God's image-bearer. The notion of gender as a social construct independent of biological sex is a modern invention without biblical warrant.
Sex is God's gift, designed for a husband and wife within marriage. Sexual activity outside of that, including fornication, adultery, homosexual conduct, and anything involving minors, is outside of God's design. God made people male and female, and biological sex and gender are not separate things that can be reassigned or redefined. We hold these convictions from Scripture, not cultural preference.
We believe that human life begins at conception and that every person bears the image of God from that moment. The taking of innocent human life is contrary to God's revealed will. We therefore affirm the full dignity and protection of all human life, from conception to natural death, and stand opposed to abortion and euthanasia as violations of that dignity.
Human life begins at conception. Every person bears the image of God from that moment. Taking innocent human life is wrong. We are opposed to abortion and euthanasia because every life, from the moment of conception to natural death, has dignity that comes from God and must be protected.
We believe that the office of elder, including the lead pastor, is limited to men who meet the qualifications set forth in Scripture — a conviction rooted in the order of creation and the consistent witness of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. This position is not a cultural relic but the settled teaching of the church throughout all of history. "Christian egalitarianism" is a modern construct without warrant in Scripture or historic Christianity. We joyfully affirm the vital and irreplaceable role of women in the life, ministry, and mission of the church.
The office of elder, which includes the lead pastor, is for men who meet the qualifications the Bible lays out. This is not a cultural holdover from a different era. It is what Scripture teaches from beginning to end and what the church has held throughout its history. We also firmly believe women are vital to the life and ministry of the church in ways that are genuine, meaningful, and irreplaceable.