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(Excerpted from the Church Constitution and By-Laws)
Mount Pleasant Baptist Church seeks to be a dynamic spiritual organism empowered by the Holy Spirit to share Christ with as many people as possible in our church, community, and throughout the world. We seek to be a worshiping fellowship, experiencing an awareness of God, recognizing His person, and responding in obedience to His leadership. We seek to experience an increasingly meaningful fellowship with God and believers. We seek to help people experience growing knowledge of God and man. We seek to be a church which ministers unselfishly to persons in the community and in the world in Jesus' name. We seek to be a church whose purpose is to be Christlike in our daily living by emphasizing total commitment of life, personality, and possessions to the Lordship of Christ.
Mount Pleasant Baptist Church affirms the Holy Bible as the inspired Word of God and the basis for our beliefs. This church subscribes to the doctrinal statement of The Baptist Faith and Message as adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1963. We voluntarily band ourselves together as a body of baptized believers in Jesus Christ personally committed to sharing the good news of salvation to lost mankind. The ordinances of the church are believer's baptism and the Lord's Supper. See the 2000
Baptist Faith & Message: (Also has the full text of the 1925 and 1963 Baptist Faith & Message statements)
Having been led as we believe by the Spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and, on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we do now in the presence of God and this assembly most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another as one body in Christ. We engage, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit to walk together in Christian love; to strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge, holiness, and comfort; to promote its prosperity and spirituality; to sustain its worship, ordinances, doctrines, and discipline; to contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, and the relief of the poor, and the spread of the Gospel through all nations. We also engage to maintain family and secret devotions; to religiously educate our children; to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances; to walk circumspectly in the world; to be just in our dealings, faithful in our engagements, and exemplary in our deportment; to avoid all tattling, backbiting and excessive anger; to abstain from the sale and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage; to use our influence to combat the abuse of drugs and the spread of pornography; and be zealous in our efforts to advance the Kingdom of our Savior. We further engage to watch over one another in brotherly love; to remember one another in prayer; to aid one another in sickness and distress; to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and Christian courtesy in speech; to be slow to take offense but always ready for reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay. We moreover engage that when we remove from this place we will as soon as possible unite with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God's Word.
The
mission of this church is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the
world around us through word and deed; to equip and encourage God’s
people to live a Christ-centered life and to win the lost to Christ
through personal witness and evangelism; and to be sensitive and
submissive to the Holy Spirit that we may live disciplined Christian
lives, walk with the Lord daily, an grow in Christlikness.
We
are not worthy in and of ourselves to be entrusted with all that God has
given us as a church family. Yet
we ascribe to live lives that are worthy of His calling.
We seek to honor the Scriptural challenge given by Paul to the
Ephesians: Eph 4:1-6 NKJV Following
this Vision of Purpose, we wholeheartedly commit ourselves to seek
to fulfill the Lord’s call and command through the following Ministry
Goals:
W-O-R-T-H-Y WORSHIP We will preach and teach the Bible as the inspired,
inerrant, infallible Word of God.
We
will seek to worship the Lord with praise, prayer and in His power. We will always invite people to publicly commit themselves
to the Lord and His Kingdom purpose.
We will seek to worship in services that are Spirit-filled
and free of ritualism and empty tradition.
We want this church to be a New Testament church, focusing
our faith on Jesus as our Savior and Lord and lifting Him up as crucified
for our sins, raised for our justification, and coming for our
glorification.
OUTREACH We will make sure that every person attending our church is
made to feel welcome. We will strive to always be a friendly church, extending the
hand of fellowship to all who come our way.
We will be obedient to the Great Commission, striving to
achieve “every member outreach”, where every member is a missionary
and an ambassador for Christ, and each personally shares his/her faith in
personal witness.
We will promote and support the work of our larger family of
God in the Elkin Baptist Association, the North Carolina Baptist State
Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, and around the world.
We will pray for and participate in missions at home and
abroad, encouraging and supporting missions education, missions giving,
and missions service when and where we can personally go.
RENEW We will strive to be a church growing in the Spirit of the
Lord and in spiritual knowledge and wisdom.
We will commit personally to grow in our faith and to fight
the natural inclination to spiritual stagnation and decline.
We will be faithful to the Lord in supporting and attending
revival services and other opportunities for personal spiritual renewal
that are offered in the church from time to time.
We will pray fervently for the work of this church and
God’s Kingdom. We will seek daily spiritual renewal through personal and
corporate prayer, realizing that this is not optional for a Christian,
but essential.
We will do all that we can to make and keep this church a
house of prayer. TEACH We will make the study and teaching of God’s Word a
personal and corporate priority.
We will support the Sunday School with our prayers, our
participation, and our promotion.
We will encourage and attend special Bible study events,
including We will offer classes in Sunday School and HELP We will always seek to help others in Jesus’ name, whether
here at church, at home, or out in the world.
We will make ministry and missions our focus in serving,
giving time, talents, money and lives to do for others what the Lord has
done for us.
W will minister through prayer where we cannot go in person;
and where we can, we will go to “give a cup of cold water” in
Jesus’ name.
Our
church doors will always be open to those in need in our community. YIELD We will diligently seek to follow the Lord where it says, “Let
nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of
mind let each esteem others better than himself.”
(Phil 2:3,4 NKJV)
We will yield the demands of self to the service of others,
remembering the admonition of James:
NKJV WE HEREBY COMMIT
OURSELVES TO THIS VISION OF PURPOSE AND THE MINISTRY GOALS IT CALLS Committed to by the
church in worship, January 19, 2003
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OUR
CHURCH'S OBJECTIVES
OUR VISION OF PURPOSE