What is Faith Bible Church?

Faith Bible Church of Concord, New Hampshire is a caring, Bible-believing assembly committed to the historic teachings of the Christian faith.  Because we are not typical of churches today, there are some things about us we would like you to know.

We are a Bible Church. 

We believe God has revealed Himself and our human condition through His Holy Word, the Bible, which was miraculously written and preserved throughout the centuries, despite repeated attempts to destroy both it and those who follow it.  Our stand on Scripture affects us in two ways.

First, we take Bible doctrine seriously. Many today consider “doctrine” to be cold, theological facts, and so it can be if it is presented that way.  But because our understanding of the Bible affects our perception of God and what He expects of us, Paul the Apostle often stressed the importance of sound doctrine that was necessary for an obedient Christian life (1 Tim. 6:3; 2 Tim. 4:2-3, Tit. 1:9, 2 John 1:9), referring to it as “the doctrine that accords with godliness.”  Therefore, we strive to understand God’s wonderful truths in a way that applies them to our everyday life.

We also take the Bible seriously in our worship of God. We believe this excludes many casual and irreverant modern methods that have found their way into the church, and so we hold to a simple and reverent time of worship and fellowship, which includes the singing of traditional (though not necessarily old) songs and hymns, Bible preaching, prayer and communion.

We are a Reformed Church.

Who were the Reformers? The long struggle against a greedy and morally corrupt establishment Church reached its climax in the 16th century with the great Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, William Tyndale, and many others who had discovered the truth by going back to its Source, the Bible.  These men, who would sooner have been burned at the stake than deny the Christ of the Scriptures, are still remembered because of their great passion and holy boldness.

What did they Believe? This period of great spiritual intensity and reform was brought about in large part by the recovery of Biblical doctrine, as men of God studied the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, and wrote about them in memorable ways, including the “Five Solas,” and the great “Doctrines of Grace.” Realizing that the torch of truth had been carried by others throughout church history, these men not only preached these truths passionately but promoted the writing of church confessions and “catechisms” (questions and answers used as a teaching tool) to make God’s truths understandable to the average person and to children.

What are the "Five Solas"? These were the basic biblical principles that shaped the Reformation and if truly believed and practiced, would “turn the world upside down” even in our day:  the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura in Latin) reveals Jesus Christ (Solus Christus), who alone makes man’s redemption possible, not by human decision but by grace alone (Sola Gratia), not by our good works but through faith alone (Sola Fide), not for man’s pleasure but for the glory of God alone (Soli Deo Gloria).  Thus, the entire plan of salvation from start to finish is a great work of God, and thus truly “effectual” in making every believer a “new creature,” 2 Cor. 5:17) that will bring God glory.

What are the "Doctrines of Grace"? Essential to Reformed doctrine, the Doctrines of Grace are the great truths, found all throughout Scripture, of God’s sovereign control over the world and human affairs, including His sovereign election (not merely foreknowledge) of all who would be saved. Because these truths often make people uncomfortable since they tear down our human pride and take us beyond our human understanding, they have often been considered unimportant, especially in our doctrinally shallow modern times.  We believe that we cannot understand our holy and all-powerful God, or our duty to Him, without considering these biblical truths which have often been maligned and ignored, but never disproved.  

We are a Baptist Church. 

We hold not only to the basic teachings of the Christian faith such as Christ’s deity, virgin birth and Resurrection, along with man’s sinful condition and need of personal salvation through Christ, but we stand on historic Baptist principles such as the baptism of believers only, and the right of each local church to govern its own affairs. 

Among our beliefs we include the Doctrines of Grace (see above), which were held by history’s greatest Baptists including John Bunyan and Charles Spurgeon, and were treated as basic Christian truth by the Second London Baptist Confession (1689); the broadly received Philadelphia Confession (1742); the New Hampshire Confession (1833), the founders of Southern Baptist Convention (1843), and by a majority of Baptists in America even as late as 1900, when the president of a prominent Baptist seminary noted that,

in common with the large body of evangelical Christians, nearly all Baptists believe what are usually termed the Doctrines of Grace:  the absolute sovereignty and foreknowledge of God, His eternal and unchangeable purposes or decrees, that salvation in its beginning, continuance and completion is God's free gift, and that in Christ we are elected or chosen personally or individually from eternity. 

Today, those of who hold to Reformed teachings along with Baptist principles are often called “Reformed Baptists.

We are a Confessional Church. 

What are Confessions? We believe is it not sufficient merely to say “We believe the Bible,” for many heretics and radicals claimed their beliefs are from the Bible! For this reason, and because false teachers have existed since the time of the Apostles, church “confessions” (also known as “creeds”) have been used since the early church to help distinguish truth from error.  These are not liturgies to be chanted, but statements of what the Bible teaches and what we believe, agreed upon by a broad consensus of Bible believers.  We believe our heritage of great church confessions, documents founded on a careful study of Bible teaching, shows how unified, not how separated, Bible believers have been in their basic beliefs throughout the ages.

Which Confessions? Faith Bible Church holds to the London Baptist Confession of 1689, and to the simpler New Hampshire Confession of 1833, agreed upon by a large consensus of Baptists in New Hampshire and later adopted in many other states. We believe these confessions are helpful for two reasons. First, they help keep the church from “doctrinal drift,” a gradual slide into error that can happen even among people sitting in church with Bibles wide open. Second, because God does not change, nor does man (regarding his sinful condition or his spiritual needs), the confessions are still relevant to our needs as individual Christians today.

We are an Evangelistic Church. 

We believe that a spirit of evangelism is the essence of biblical Christianity, for one who has been transformed by the Lord has a desire for others to know Him too.  However, we are not “hyper-evangelistic,” focusing on evangelism to the exclusion of other aspects of the Christian life (for after the Gospels and book of Acts, there is little specific mention of evangelism); nor do we design our meetings to appeal to the world, for this would make the church, which was instituted for the benefit of God's people, into a congregation of “seekers” and unbelievers rather than a community of believers.

Evangelism and Divine Election:  Though the doctrine of divine election is considered by some to be incompatible with evangelism, we see no incompatibility at all, nor did most of history’s greatest evangelists or missionaries. (When Spurgeon was asked how he could reconcile his Calvinism with evangelism, he said, "I do not need to reconcile friends.")  This biblical truth affects our methods but not our passion.  The Gospel cannot be made appealing to everyone, for Paul said, “But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Because Scripture tells us salvation is completely of God and is not dependent on human decision (John 1:13), we are careful to avoid emotional methods and salesmanship techniques that can lead to false converts.  Our duty is merely to preach Christ and to leave the results to God, knowing that not one whom God intends to save will ever be lost, for as Jesus said to His heavenly Father, “all that the Father giveth me shall ckome to me.”

We are a Family-Friendly
but Adult-Oriented Church.

This may be easily misunderstood, for we love children, but we believe God’s primary means of preserving His truth is through adults to their children (Deut. 6:4-9), and not the other way around.  While it is certainly appropriate to teach children Bible truths in an age-appropriate manner, we believe, based on the departure from the faith of so many young people who have “grown up in church,” that Bible truths are most likely to take root in our childen when they are taught and modeled by parents in their homes.  Also, because the demands of our modern culture so often separate parents from their children, we believe it is of great value for children to be with their parents in church at as early an age as possible.  Children in our day need an antidote to the mostly negative effects of peer pressure, and so to us, parents together with their children in God’s house on the Lord’s Day is a beautiful sight.  We think you will agree!

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We strive to pattern our church not on modern methods, but on the pattern Christ and the Apostles established in the New Testament (Eph. 2:19-22).  We are a people church, not a program church, and we hope you will consider whether Faith Bible Church is right for you and your family.  We welcome visitors, and are always happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have.