About us

Grace Church

"Grace is God's kindness shown to the ill-deserving." That's us and that's our experience!

Grace Church is a growing group of people following Jesus from many ages and diverse backgrounds. We're a bunch of people who have experienced the transforming kindness of God at work in our lives, and we want to share that with those around us.

We are passionate about the truth of the Bible, and eager to live out its message in genuine Christian lifestyles, living and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. We want to be in the town, for the town, loving, serving and introducing the growing population to Jesus.

Grace Mission

Before leaving earth Jesus gave his disciples a mission to make disciples who make disciples. Our specific mission at Grace Church is:

to be, through God’s grace, an authentic Christian community in our area

to introduce the growing population to Jesus Christ
to help them grow to be more like him
to help them reproduce this process in others

Church is God's primary mission strategy. Church is not essentially about structures, locations, frequency of meetings or styles of meeting. With this in mind Grace Church is organised around mission, for mission. Smaller groups, called 'gospel communities', are the heart of our mission strategy - groups of people, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, transformed by grace, loving God passionately, loving others sacrificially, intentionally commending Christ in word and deed in their particular social networks and neighbourhoods. We call them gospel communities because they're communities which are all about the gospel, are formed by the gospel and exist for the gospel. We see gospel communities in the bible in Mark 1:15-20, where Jesus preached the gospel and formed a community around it. There's also Acts 2, where Peter preached the gospel concerning Jesus Christ crucified and risen, and a community was formed around that. With mission in mind we will prioritise putting money, time, prayer and effort into identifying and developing young leaders who can lead new mission initiatives and plant new churches.

Grace Values

Worship centred God’s glory is what Grace Church is about, it’s not about us. We exist to glorify God – to worship and enjoy him and to work to bring others to reconciliation with Him so that they worship and enjoy Him too.

Relationship focused God’s love reconciles us not only to God, but to other people. Grace Church is to be a radically inclusive and authentic community of love and life sharing relationships. The gospel frees us to be extravagantly generous in those relationships, just as God has been extravagantly generous to us.

Mission shaped God’s gospel forms us in to a missional and incarnational community. Every follower of Jesus has been commissioned to make disciples and missional means we are intentional and deliberate about doing that - we are missionaries to our community for God's glory and the joy of all people. We are defined by and organised around being on God's mission. To be missional we must also be incarnational, entering in to other people's social and cultural reality with the grace of Jesus. Each of us has been providentially placed in a specific place with a unique sphere of people so we will prayerfully look for opportunities to share the gospel with those people, and to show them the love of Jesus with compassionate acts of kindness and by introducing them to our church community.

Word built God’s Word is the tool of God’s Spirit to build God’s people for God’s glory. Grace Church seeks to proclaim and hear God’s Word through preaching, teaching, reading, studying, discussing, searching, applying, singing and praying the Bible when we gather together. Following Jesus is a radical lifestyle of faith and self-sacrifice in joyful obedience to God’s Word. Therefore, we will encourage and help each other, and others, to believe, enjoy and obey God’s Word in all of life through our words, example and community activity.

Holy Spirit empowered God’s Spirit empowers God’s people to glorify God in service and witness. We are powerless without the Holy Spirit doing God’s work in us, through us and among us, so we must depend on Him through committed and regular prayer in the Spirit for ourselves, our mission and our world.

Transforming lives God’s grace transforms lives through His powerful gospel. Through gospel proclamation and kingdom living we seek gospel transformation in individuals, networks and communities as they are redeemed by God’s transforming grace.

Grace Faith

Our path is a person: Jesus is the Way. Our creed is a person: Jesus is the Truth. Our lifestyle is a person: Jesus is the Life

The following commonly-used doctrinal statement is a useful summary of what we believe:

There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's wrath and condemnation.
The Lord Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God's sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God's act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God's just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.

We believe in the historic, orthodox creeds of Christianity - the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.