About First Baptist Church
-
First Baptist Church is a multigenerational church that exists to help people find and follow God. We seek to provide a safe place for people of all walks of life to experience true life-change through authentic, biblical community with God. Regardless of your story, your doubts, or your struggles,you are welcome at First Baptist Church in Reading, Pennsylvania. So come as you are. We can't wait for you to visit and to welcome you home. We believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in all believers, and through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, a distinct experience from salvation, believers are empowered for Christian service, and gifted for this service.
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God's truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God's revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God's pledge, in all that it promises. As God's people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
About Sin: We believe that man willfully sinned against God and is therefore lost and without hope apart from Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:7; Acts 4:12)
About The Ministry: A divinely called and scripturally ordained ministry has been provided by our Lord for the fourfold purpose of leading the Church in: Evangelization of the world. Mark 16:15-20 Worship of God. John 4:23,24 Building a body of saints being perfected in the image of His Son. Ephesians 4:11-16, Meeting human need with ministries of love and compassion. Psalms 112:9, Galatians 2:10; 6:10, James 1:27