As evangelicals, the Bible is our final authority for faith and practice.   Therefore, the statements that follow reflect our best attempt to understand and live out biblical precepts.  Upon further reflection, greater biblical insight, or increased wisdom through experience, these statements could be revised.  Until such a time, The Association of Vineyard Churches Board of Directors formally adopts this document as our official statement of faith as of the board meeting in November 1994.

We now commend this for use by all our pastors in all our churches with the prayer that God will bless our sincere desire and humble attempt to be ambassadors of the rule and reign of His kingdom through our lives, that His will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

--Todd Hunter, National Coordinator
--Association of Vineyard Churches,
--Revised September 1999

 Paragraph 1     God is the King and the Holy Trinity
WE BELIEVE that God is the Eternal King . He is an infinite , unchangeable  Spirit , perfect  in holiness, wisdom, goodness, justice, power  and love. From all eternity  He exists as the One Living and True God in three persons  of one substance, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory.

 Paragraph 2     God the King: The Creator and Ruler of All Things
 WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom is everlasting . From His throne , through His Son, His eternal Word , God created , upholds and governs all that exists: the heavenly places, the angelic hosts, the universe, the earth, every living thing and mankind. God created all things very good.

Paragraph 3     Counterfeit Kingdom: Satan and Demonic Hosts
 WE BELIEVE that Satan, originally a great, good angel, rebelled against God, taking a host of angels with him. He was cast out of God's presence and, as a usurper of God's rule, established a counter-kingdom of darkness and evil on the earth.

Paragraph 4     The Kingdom in the Creation of Man, the Fall and the Doctrine of Original Sin
WE BELIEVE that God created mankind in His own image, male and female, for relationship with Himself and to govern the earth. Under the temptation of Satan, our original parents fell from grace, bringing sin, sickness and God's judgment of death to the earth. Through the fall, Satan and his demonic hosts gained access to God's good creation.Creation now experiences the consequences and effects of Adam's original sin. Human beings are born in sin, subject to God's judgment of death and captive to Satan's kingdom of darkness.

 Paragraph 5     God's Providence, Kingdom Law and Covenants
WE BELIEVE that God did not abandon His rule over the earth which He continues to uphold by His providence. In order to bring redemption, God established covenants which revealed His grace to sinful people . In the covenant with Abraham, God bound Himself to His people Israel, promising to deliver them from bondage to sin and Satan and to bless all the nations through them.

WE BELIEVE that as King, God later redeemed His people by His mighty acts from bondage in Egypt  and established His covenant through Moses, revealing His perfect will and our obligation to fulfill it. The law's purpose is to order our fallen race and to make us conscious of our moral responsibility. By the work of God's Spirit, it convicts us of our sin and God's righteous judgment against us and brings us to Christ alone for salvation.

WE BELIEVE that when Israel rejected God's rule over her as King, God established the monarchy in Israel  and made an unconditional covenant with David , promising that his heir would restore God's kingdom reign over His people as Messiah forever.

Paragraph 6     Christ the Mediator and Eternal King
WE BELIEVE that in the fullness of time , God honored His covenants with Israel and His prophetic promises of salvation by sending His Son, Jesus, into the world. Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, as fully God and fully man in one person, He is humanity as God intended us to be. Jesus was anointed as God's Messiah and empowered by the Holy Spirit, inaugurating God's kingdom reign on earth, overpowering the reign of Satan by resisting temptation, preaching the good news of salvation, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. Gathering His disciples, He reconstituted God's people as His Church to be the instrument of His kingdom. After dying for the sins of the world, Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day, fulfilling the covenant of blessing given to Abraham. In His sinless, perfect life Jesus met the demands of the law and in His atoning death on the cross, He took God's judgment for sin which we deserve as law-breakers. By His death on the cross He also disarmed the demonic powers. The covenant with David was fulfilled in Jesus' birth from David's house, His Messianic ministry, His glorious resurrection from the dead, His ascent into heaven and His present rule at the right hand of the Father. As God's Son and David's heir, He is the eternal Messiah-King, advancing God's reign throughout every generation and throughout the whole earth today.

 Paragraph 7     The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
 WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church at Pentecost in power, baptizing believers into the Body of Christ  and releasing the gifts of the Spirit to them. The Spirit brings the permanent indwelling presence of God to us for spiritual worship, personal sanctification, building up the Church, gifting us for ministry, and driving back the kingdom of Satan by the evangelization of the world through proclaiming the word of Jesus and doing the works of Jesus.

WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in Jesus Christ and that He is our abiding Helper, Teacher, and Guide. We believe in the filling or empowering of the Holy Spirit, often a conscious experience, for ministry today. We believe in the present ministry of the Spirit and in the exercise of all of the biblical gifts of the Spirit. We practice the laying on of hands for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing, and for recognition and empowering of those whom God has ordained to lead and serve the Church

 Paragraph 8     The Sufficiency of Scripture
 WE BELIEVE that the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of Holy Scripture so that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments  as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

 Paragraph 9     The Power of the Gospel Over the Kingdom of Darkness
 WE BELIEVE that the whole world is under the domination of Satan and that all people are sinners by nature and choice. All people therefore are under God's just judgment. Through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates, justifies, adopts and sanctifies  through Jesus by the Spirit all who repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. By this they are released from Satan's domain and enter into God's kingdom reign
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 Paragraph 10    The Church: Instrument of the Kingdom
 WE BELIEVE in the one, holy, universal Church. All who repent of their sins and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior are regenerated by the Holy Spirit  and form the living Body of Christ, of which He is the head and of which we are all members
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 Paragraph 11    Baptism and the Lord's Supper
 WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ committed two ordinances to the Church: water baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both are available to all believers.

 Paragraph 12    The Kingdom of God and the Final Judgment
 WE BELIEVE that God's kingdom has come in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, that it continues to come in the ministry of the Spirit through the Church, and that it will be consummated in the glorious, visible and triumphant appearing of Christ  - His return to the earth as King. After Christ returns to reign, He will bring about the final defeat of Satan and all of his minions and works, the resurrection of the dead , the final Judgment  and the eternal blessing of the righteous and eternal conscious punishment of the wicked. Finally, God will be all in all and His kingdom, His rule and reign, will be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth, recreated by His mighty power, in which righteousness dwells and in which He will forever be worshipped.