Our Confessions of Faith
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While the First Baptist Church of Parker recognizes the splendid and
scriptural content of both the First and Second London Confessions of
Faith, we look to them as our guides, not as our lords. Christ alone is our
King, the Holy Scripture His only Scepter. Only to the authority of this
King and Scepter are our consciences bound. Moreover, as the church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, our collective mind and will are supreme and sovereign
over these confessions. Thus we exercise the liberty of loving disagreement
in those areas where these magnificent confessions may differ, especially in
relation to "the sabbath" and "the law."
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Such an approach liberates us from the division among "reformed" Baptists who
quibble and divide themselves over the Sabbath. We welcome both the
sabbatarian and the non-sabbatarian to
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our membership, but we will admit
neither to our fellowship who would attempt to engage us in "doubtful
disputations" over the Sabbath or the Law. If you are looking for a church
strictly sabbatarian with all its legalistic accouterments, or a loosely
libertarian church who will ignore biblical and compassionate discipline,
this is not the church for you. We have no towers for the high-minded
Calvinist who loves God's people less than He loves to argue with them.
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We take a moderating position on the Sabbath, that God's people should
faithfully assemble themselves together on the Lord's day and that they
should "regard the Day unto the Lord"; but we also assert that Christ is our
typological Sabbath, and that the chronological sabbath "was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath," and therefore we "rejoice in the liberty wherewith
Christ has set us free from the yoke of bondage."
We also reject the "speck in your eye" approach of those "reformed Baptists"
whose penchant for "full-faced fellowship" engenders an invasive and abusive
eldership which lords over God's heritage. We are unapologetically
Calvinistic and Baptistic, but we are also tender-hearted, deferent, loving,
and humble one before another, each esteeming the other better than himself.
We worship and fellowship together in a mutual faith which affirms the
following proverbs:
"Unity in things essential, liberty in things non-essential,
and charity in all things"
and
"A Christian needs a good heart, well headed,
and a good head, well hearted."
"Speaking the truth in love" is our watchword.
Pastor Hal Brunson
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