Church by the Chesapeake in Calvert County, Maryland

Our Passion

Our passion is expressed by the primary values that underlie our work as a church family. These core value helps us to prioritize our activities and helps to establish what activities we engage in as we work to accomplish our mission.

WHAT ARE OUR CHURCH'S CORE VALUES?

* BIBLICAL TRUTH

We have an enormous respect for the power and authority of the inerrant written Word of God. We understand the Word of God to be objectively true. It is therefore a reliable guide for doctrine and life application. We will seek to understand the Scriptures in a manner that emphasize both accuracy and relevancy. We desire to be true to the original intent of the Scriptures while highlighting their relevancy to contemporary living. We will uphold the basic doctrinal non-negotiables that have always formed the distinctive historic beliefs of biblical Christianity: the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity, virgin birth and miracles of Christ, His substitutionary death, physical resurrection, and future bodily return.

* WORSHIP

We believe in an awesome and magnificent creator God who is loving, holy, and sovereign, and who deserves to be continually obeyed and worshiped for His character and works, and who desires us to enjoy His presence forever. We seek to provide a Sunday morning celebration that draws us to worship in spirit and truth. Christ will be the focus of our worship and His glory shall be exalted in all our gatherings. We will seek to worship in a contemporary casual atmosphere without diminishing a reverence for God and His holiness.

* MISSIONS & OUTREACH

We live by the driving compulsion that people without Jesus Christ are eternally lost and desperately in need of the salvation that is offered to them in the gospel of God's grace, and which may be received only through exercising personal trust in the substitutionary death and victorious resurrection of our Lord. We therefore seek to encourage and equip believers to personally obey the Great Commission through a positive witness of life and words, through community outreach ministries, and through the support of missionary outreach worldwide. We will be committed to being effective in our outreach, socially responsible in our community, and strategically involved in world evangelism.

* OUR CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

We believe that oneness with God and with one another are among our highest priorities. We therefore seek to promote and provide activities that build close friendships and provide multiple opportunities for fellowship. We desire to build a Christian community that authentically loves, accepts and supports one another regardless of previous religious experiences, social standing, ethnicity, and convictions on doctrinal beliefs that are not core to historic Christianity. We will strive for complete unity, without ever insisting on uniformity. We are motivated and committed to love, nurture, and care for those in our church family by showing concern, sensitivity, and action to meet their spiritual, emotional and physical needs. We will pursue genuine relationships with each other that will produce intimacy, encouragement, accountability and support. We desire to be a people of the book. A people of prayer. A people of worship.

* FAMILY

We have a high regard for the integrity and sanctity of the family as the foundational unit of society and as the best starting point for spiritual nurture and training. We will have a strong commitment to nurturing and honoring the biblical role of the family. We believe the church should be a place of encouragement and equipping for the family, especially in regard to its relationships and responsibilities. We will also be a vehicle to love the abandoned, to rebuild the broken, to forgive the sinner, and to support those forced into non-traditional family roles.

* LEADERSHIP

We share the conviction that the effectiveness and fruitfulness of our church ministry is dependent upon having a united team of biblically qualified, Spirit-filled, servant leaders who set an example of excellence in the Christian life. We recognize Christ as the head of the church and that he has appointed a plurality of elders and pastors to give leadership and to equip believers for service and ministry. We are therefore committed to a team approach to leadership. We will seek to recruit and train perspective leaders by mentoring and training them so that they will be prepared to skillfully deal with problems and issues within the church and not ignore them.

* EQUIPPING FOR GROWTH

We are convinced that God's design for His church is that each believer be established and equipped to employ their spiritual gift for fruitful service in the church and in our society. We therefore seek to mobilize and employ each believer in a ministry that matches their individual gift, talents, and passion. We will consistently challenge people to a lifestyle of growth in respect to personal character, biblical priorities and life vision. We believe this ministry should be constantly expanding and will continually evaluate our church's effectiveness - pursuing innovative change whenever necessary.