The movement to plant a PCA church in Cleveland was spearheaded by a group of men who long to establish a witness for the Reformed faith in this area. Originally coming from Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist backgrounds, this group has been the moving force behind the plans to establish a Reformed witness in their community. They are Reformed by conviction, having wrestled with the theological and doctrinal issues which formed the ethos of the Protestant Reformation. Having had their own Christian experience revolutionized through the God-centered emphasis of Reformed theology, they long to see their city, county, and world impacted by that same theology. A commitment to God-centered evangelism, biblical preaching and teaching, the nurture of the Christian family, and the passionate application of the Christian faith to all areas of life join together to give impetus to the effort to plant a church which is Reformed in its theology, and presbyterian in its church-government in Cleveland. This effort, like all that we attempt to accomplish for Christ's kingdom, is solely dependant upon God for its ultimate success. May God in His grace make it so.

Our Purpose and Mission

We live at a time when the importance of the organized church is downplayed. Our culture has placed so much emphasis upon the rights, opinions and desires of the individual that the church has almost come to be viewed as an optional choice for those who profess faith in Christ, and one which exists to serve the "needs" of its constituents. In the effort to emphasize the personal nature of faith in Christ, we have at times forgotten the fact that faith is nurtured and lived out in the context of a community of faith, established by God, called the church. To demean the church is to demean God's intention to save His people from their sins, to say that His plan to establish a people for His own pleasure is insignificant.

The church extends to all nations and all types of people. We sometimes speak of the visible and invisiblechurch. When we use this type of terminology it is important to remember we aren't talking about two different churches, but rather the church seen from two perspectives, ours and God's. The visible church consists of all those who outwardly make a credible profession of faith in Christ and their children (Romans 15:9-12, Genesis 17:7, Acts 2:39). Christ has given to the visible church the ministry, Word and commands of God for gathering and maturing His people in this life until the end of the age. Through His presence in His church through the power of His Spirit, Christ uses the means of grace He has ordained both call people to Himself and to mature them in the Christian faith. The invisible church consists of those people who both credibly profess and truly possess faith in Christ, and includes all those who have, are, or shall be gathered to Christ by faith throughout all of human history.

Why does the church exist?

God, through His love and grace, has brought the church into being. The church exists to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But what does that mean? Not leaving us to our own devices, God has revealed Himself and His plan for His church in His holy, inspired and inerrant Word. God is glorified and enjoyed as His people believe, obey and passionately desire Him according to His Word. What does this imply?

• Faith is a gift which God gives to those who were dead in their sins, enabling them to believe the gospel (Ephesians 2:1-10, John 6:44). This faith, established at conversion, increases as we study and meditate upon God's Word and as we grow in grace through the means Christ has given to the Church in the preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the sacraments, and prayer.

• Our obedience to God's Word is empowered by the Holy Spirit. To speak of being "led by the Spirit" and to ignore obedience to God's revealed will, given in His written Word, is a profound contradiction in terms (Romans 8:1-10). Our obedience is manifested as faith produces works in a life given to obedience to God's will (Ephesians 2:10, James 2:26).

• Passionate desire for God doesn't occur naturally in the human heart. Rather, God Himself frees our hearts from sin, makes us alive toward Christ, and enables us to respond to the love He has shown.

God has given the church a summary of His will, a synopsis of the duty His people owe to Him:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." - Matthew 22:35-40

First, loving God with all our heart, soul and mind requires that we know Him. God has revealed Himself to us both in the pages of Scripture and in the person of Christ, the Word made flesh. The reason sound doctrine matters is because we will be conformed to the image of the God whom we serve.

Second, the love of God naturally leads to love of our neighbor, as we see each individual as bearing the image of our Creator. Indeed, we come to know and truly understand love because God has loved us. The comfort we share with others flows from the comfort we have received from God in Christ.

Trinity Presbyterian Church is called to be a body where love for God and our neighbor forms the foundation of all that we do, both as individuals and as a church.

What should the church be doing?

There is a great deal of confusion over the role of the church in our culture. Is the church primarily a mechanism for accomplishing social good? Or is it principally the moral watchdog of the community? Or is it perhaps a political-action committee intent on seeing a particular legislative agenda accomplished, whether that agenda be liberal or conservative? Happily, God in His Word has given His church a summary of His plan in two passages of Scripture. The church's great mission is based upon the authority of the risen Christ, and carries the weight of an explicit command:

"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." - Matthew 28:18-20

In the Great Commission, Christ gave the church a plan for advancing His Kingdom which could not be improved upon. Biblical disciple-making is rolling up our sleeves, committing to God and to His church, and seeking to be obedient to Christ's commands as they relate to the various aspects of our lives. Evangelism which stops short of "making disciples" does not fulfill the commandment which Christ has given to His church. Biblical disciple-making involves the incorporation of the individual into the visible church through the covenant sign of baptism, as well teaching each one the Word of God, revealing what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of us.

Finally, the extent of the church's mandate to extend the Kingdom of God is given in the opening chapter of God's Word:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." - Genesis 1:26-28

The salvation which God has accomplished for His people impacts every area of life, not merely the "religious" or "spiritual" aspects. To live all of life under the Lordship of Christ is to declare with our lives, our talents, our families, our vocations and our possessions the same desire Christ taught His disciples and us to express in the Lord's Prayer, that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Trinity Presbyterian Church is called to preach the gospel of God's grace, to make disciples, and to seek to see the influence of God's Kingdom advanced in every area of our society and culture.

Our Vision

Our vision is to be a biblical, evangelical and Reformed witness to the gospel of Christ's Kingdom in Cleveland, Tennessee and unto the world.

A Biblical Church

We are a church committed to the Bible, God's authoritative self-disclosure of His will for His people. We are committed to teaching the living, active word of God within the church in order to impact the lives of our members and to equip them to be ambassadors of Christ. They, in turn, will impact multiple lives outside the walls of the church as God uses them to spread the Gospel and to advance His Kingdom within their sphere of influence in the home, at work and at school.

We are committed to teaching sound doctrine as the basis of sound living. Our doctrine must be practical, and our practice doctrinal. We are committed to teaching sound doctrine not only from the pulpit and in our Christian education program, but also in our homes through the rearing of our children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.

An Evangelical Church

We are committed to the clear preaching of the Gospel of God's grace toward undeserving sinners as the only hope men have of being reconciled to God. We must simultaneously strive to be evangelistic and to use means and methods of evangelism which are both biblical and proper in light of the serious and holy nature of the Gospel.

We believe God has clearly outlined both the pattern of government and the plan of action for His church in the Scriptures, and we are committed to following that pattern and plan. We are committed to being part of a connected body of churches, subject to one another in the love of Christ.

While we recognize that there are doctrinal differences which separate the visible body of Christ, we are committed to pray for Christians of other denominations, and to cooperate with them as far as possible in spreading the Gospel both in our community and to the ends of the earth.

A Reformed Church

Because we emphasize the centrality of God's Word in our work and worship as a church, we are also a confessional church. We affirm that all creeds, confessions of faith and private opinions men are subject to the final authority of the word of God. At the same time, we affirm that to ignore the historical confessional statements of the Church framed throughout its long history would be a rather short-sighted, arrogant mistake. We are committed to the historical doctrinal positions of Christ's church expressed in the ecumenical creeds formulated by the Church throughout its history, such as the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. Believing that God's preservation, nurture and provision for His church for the past 2,000 years should not be ignored, we rejoice to be connected to the Body of Christ in its historical context, to follow in the footsteps of those who have faithfully followed Christ before us.

Believing the Bible to be God's inspired, infallible word, our Reformed forbears sought to express the clear teachings of Scripture in summary form in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms, which serve as the doctrinal standards for the Presbyterian Church in America. The theology of the Westminster Confession is simply that of the Scripture and of the Protestant Reformation. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the main doctrinal points around which the effort to reform the church was focused were expressed in a series of Latin "slogans":

• We are committed to sola scriptura (Scripture alone), to the authority of the Word of God alone as the measure of our faith and practice.

• We are committed to sola gratia (grace alone), the fact that sinful men and women are saved by the grace of God alone, by the merits of Christ alone.

• We are committed to sola fide (faith alone), that our salvation is through faith alone, not a mixture of faith and works.

• We are also committed to living all of life soli deo gloria (only God's glory), for the glory of God alone.

Trinity Presbyterian Church is committed to working and praying toward a second Reformation. We believe that reformation, while encompassing the concept of revival, touches upon the deeper issues of ordering our lives, homes, churches and culture under the Lordship of Christ. Thus we are committed to the priesthood of all believers, the worth before God of all careers particular Christians have been called to, and the application of the teachings of the Scripture to all aspects of life and culture.

Our Vision: Local, Regional, National and Worldwide

Our local vision is to be a vibrant, growing community of believers in Cleveland who are living lives empowered in the grace of Christ, reaching actively with the message of reconciliation offered in the gospel into the lives and situations which surround us, building up one another in the Word of God, and seeking to influence all aspects of life and culture with the Lordship of Christ.

We want to serve the people of Cleveland by boldly preaching the gospel of Christ, teaching a God-centered, biblical worldview of life, equipping believers to do the work of Christ's ministry, seeking to help meet the spiritual and physical needs of the poor of our city, and working to strengthen our city and promote community values.

Our regional vision centers around our connection with other Reformed churches. Working together, we seek to advance the cause of Christ throughout the Tennessee Valley as our resources, prayers and efforts are multiplied through cooperation with other local churches. We hope to see God raise up new congregations throughout our presbytery, and we are committed to supporting these church planting efforts.

Our national vision involves the impacting of our culture with the gospel of Christ at every level. We are committed to praying and working toward a second reformation, as all of the Christ's church from every denominational background commits itself to the authority of Scripture alone, to the preaching of the gospel that men are saved by grace alone through faith alone, and that all of life is to be lived for the glory of God alone under the Lordship of Christ. We are committed to pray for our national leaders, and to seek to be good citizens at every level of government.

Our worldwide vision involves the support of missionaries working toward the planting of indigenous, self-supporting churches throughout the world. We are committed to the use of our resources to train internationals to be church planters and leaders in their own areas of influence.

Our Priorities

We believe that the church is called to focus its ministries around five primary, inter-related areas:

Worship - We believe that worship of the triune God is at the core of the life of the believer. Sunday morning worship should set our agenda for the week's activities as our minds and hearts are moved by the preaching of God's Word, the corporate participation in the tokens of His grace He has given to the church in baptism and the Lord's Supper, and reverent prayer and God-centered worship (Romans 12:1-2).

Learning - We believe that we are to teach with authority the inerrant, infallible Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16, Matthew 28:19). God has revealed Himself through His word, and it is the only reliable standard with which to evaluate our faith, our opinions and our practice. We are to commit ourselves to the study of Scripture in order to present ourselves to Christ as workmen who do not need to be ashamed, handling the Word of truth accurately.

Community - We believe that the church is the community of believers God is building to accomplish His work in this world. As we support, nurture, challenge and pray for one another the Body of Christ is built up in love (1 Corinthians 12).

Outreach - The spreading of the Gospel through making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20) is one of the primary purposes for the Church's existence. We are committed to communicating the Gospel to our culture in the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe the Gospel is spread most effectively through Christians impacting the lives of those around them, thus we are committed to strengthening, equipping and encouraging our members to share the Gospel with those around them.

Mercy - We believe that the church has both the privilege and responsibility to minister to the needs of the less fortunate and to share the love of Christ in both word and deed (Matthew 25).

Our Core Values

Our core ministry values are:

Worship

Worship is the active process of entering into communion with the almighty, triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In worship God's attributes are acknowledged, His Word is honored, and His life-changing power is experienced through the means of grace He has given to His church. While we are committed to daily personal worship within our homes and among our families, we are also firmly committed to the importance of beginning our week before God in corporate worship. Our worship, by God's grace, will be biblical, historically connected, relevant, reverent and passionate.

Word and Sacraments

God has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, His inspired and inerrant Word. The sound preaching and teaching of God's Word is central to all Trinity Presbyterian Church will seek to accomplish. While seeking to communicate in a relevant way with our culture, we are required to preach and teach the Scriptures in the power of the Holy Spirit, not compromising its message nor ignoring its God-ordained methods.

God has also given the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper as "visible words", tokens of His love and care for His people. We will observe the sacrament of baptism as God adds to our congregation, and will observe the Lord's Supper on the first Sunday of each month.

Prayer and Reliance Upon God

We are totally dependant upon God not only for our salvation, but also for our spiritual growth both as individual Christians and as a corporate body. Prayer, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is the response brought about by God-given faith. We believe the proclamation of the Word and prayer as a response are inseparable. We will make prayer a priority as individuals and as a church.

Experiencing and Sharing God's Power

While we are brought into God's family at a point in time when we are regenerated by God's Spirit, the power of the gospel is not a one-time experience. Rather, the gospel is to be a daily reality as through the process of sanctification believers are transformed into the likeness of Christ. The source of this life-changing power is the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Having experienced God's power in our own lives, we are committed to sharing the gospel with those around us, and of reclaiming our society and culture and bringing it under the Lordship of Christ.

Equipping Believers

All members of the church have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of building up the other members of the church. The responsibility of the teaching and ruling elders in our congregation is to equip believers to do the work of the ministry in their homes and in their other spheres of influence.

Developing a Biblical Worldview

God's Word give us the only accurate "yardstick" for understanding our world. All of life is to be lived under God's rule. There is not to be a false separation in our lives between the secular and the sacred; all of life is to be lived under God's rule, for His glory. We are committed to teaching God's people that every aspect of life must be seen and lived under the Lordship of Christ.