WHAT WE BELIEVE
Our Beliefs
The convictions that shape our worship, our teaching, our discipleship, and our life together.
OUR APPROACH TO FAITH
Faith with Confidence and Humility
At Perfecting Love Charlotte, our faith is rooted in the life, death, resurrection, and continuing work of Jesus Christ.
The statements that follow are the convictions that shape our worship, our teaching, our discipleship, and our life together. We confess them not because we presume to have exhausted the mystery of God, but because we believe God has faithfully revealed Himself and continues to draw us into deeper understanding through Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the Church, faithful reason, and lived experience.
We hold our convictions with confidence and our interpretations with humility.
Faith requires both courage and humility. Without faith it is impossible to please God, yet no finite person fully comprehends the infinite God. Therefore, we gladly affirm what we believe while remaining teachable, recognizing that spiritual maturity includes both conviction and continual learning.
Our hope rests not in the certainty of our own understanding, but in the faithfulness of the God who continues to reveal Himself to His people.
CORE CONVICTIONS
Our Beliefs
The Scriptures
We believe the Scriptures are inspired by God and bear faithful witness to God's self-revelation throughout history.
God entrusted these writings to human authors who wrote from within particular cultures, languages, personalities, and historical moments under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We therefore approach Scripture with reverence, humility, careful study, thoughtful interpretation, and dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
We believe Scripture remains one of God's primary gifts for revealing Christ, forming disciples, shaping the Church, and leading humanity toward God's redemptive purposes. We read Scripture not merely to gain information, but to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.
God
We believe God is the eternal Creator and Sustainer of all that exists.
God is holy, loving, just, merciful, and actively involved in creation, continually calling humanity into deeper relationship. While God is often described through human language and imagery, we believe God ultimately transcends every human category, including gender, and remains infinitely greater than our ability to fully describe or comprehend.
Jesus Christ
We believe Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God and the fullest revelation of God's love for humanity.
Through His life, teachings, death, resurrection, and continuing ministry, God has made reconciliation available to the world. We believe that through Jesus Christ all people are invited into salvation and restored relationship with God.
Jesus is both Savior and Teacher, calling us not only to believe in Him but also to follow Him.
Salvation
We believe salvation is God's gracious work of reconciling humanity to Himself through Jesus Christ.
Salvation is God's invitation into His family, where we are forgiven, restored, transformed, and continually formed into the image of Christ. Salvation is not merely about life after death but about participating in God's redeeming work here and now.
Because salvation is the work of God's grace, we reject the idea that it can be earned through human effort or religious performance.
The Holy Spirit
We believe the Holy Spirit is God's abiding presence among us, fulfilling Jesus' promise that His followers would never be left alone.
The Holy Spirit comforts, convicts, empowers, teaches, guides, equips, and continually forms both individuals and the Church into the likeness of Christ.
Because we believe God transcends human gender, we recognize that Scripture employs both masculine and feminine imagery to describe God's activity. At times we intentionally refer to the Holy Spirit with feminine language as a reminder that no single human category can fully contain the mystery of God.
We welcome the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer and in the life of the Church.
The Church
We believe the Church is the gathered community of those who seek to follow Jesus Christ.
The Church exists to worship God, proclaim the Gospel, nurture disciples, pursue justice, serve the world, and embody the love of Christ.
We believe the local church is one of God's primary places of spiritual formation, where believers gather to worship, learn, question, pray, serve, and encourage one another as we continue becoming who God has created us to be.
Baptism and Holy Communion
We believe Baptism and Holy Communion are sacred gifts entrusted to the Church by Jesus Christ.
These holy practices proclaim the Gospel, remind us of God's grace, strengthen our faith, and unite us with the broader body of Christ across generations.
While we joyfully practice and encourage both Baptism and Communion, we do not believe these ordinances are prerequisites for salvation. Rather, they are sacred responses to God's grace and important practices of Christian formation.
The Return of Christ
We believe Jesus Christ will return.
While faithful Christians have understood the details of Christ's return in different ways throughout history, we confidently affirm the promise that Christ will ultimately fulfill God's work of redemption, establish everlasting justice and peace, and make all things new.
Until that day, we seek to live faithfully, love generously, pursue justice, proclaim hope, and participate in God's kingdom here and now.
OUR CALLING
Because We Have Been Loved
Because we have experienced the love of God, we seek to embody that love in every aspect of our lives.
We commit ourselves to loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
We believe spiritual maturity is marked not merely by what we know, but by how we love.
Therefore, we strive to be a community that welcomes the stranger, pursues truth with humility, practices justice with compassion, extends grace without reservation, and follows Jesus with courage.
For we love because He first loved us.
We hold our convictions with confidence and our interpretations with humility.
Our hope rests not in the certainty of our own understanding, but in the faithfulness of the God who continues to reveal Himself to His people.