What matters to us?

Everything we do, we do in response to God's extravagant love for us. Here are a few of the things that are important to us and that shape our church life. We believe in a loving God who showed his kindness to us by sending his son, Jesus Christ, to live amongst us. Jesus died on the cross, was buried and came back to life three days later. This all happened to settle the debt we owed God for our failings.

We believe that God gave us the Bible to teach us the truth about Him and to show us how to live life in a way that pleases God – and better for us, too. We believe that God gives us the Holy Spirit, which is essential to help us live as a Christian. He helps us to understand the Bible and the character of God. He also helps us apply what He teaches so that we can live out the things we read in the Bible.

We believe that God has given us each other here in the Church to be a family in which we can care for each other and learn from each other. We recognize that, whoever we are, everyone is special to God, and God gifts us in different ways to benefit the whole family.

Lansdowne Chapel is a member of the Evangelical Alliance and has signed up to its Basis of Faith.

What we believe

At Lansdowne Chapel, we believe in:

The one true God who lives eternally in three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God's love, grace and sovereignty in creating, sustaining, ruling, redeeming, and judging the world.
The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—entirely trustworthy for faith and conduct.
The dignity of all people, made male and female in God's image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement.
The incarnation of God's eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ—born of the Virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.
The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, reconciling us with God.
The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection; his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the world's only Saviour.
The justification of sinners solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ.
The ministry of God, the Holy Spirit, who leads us to repentance, unites us with Christ through new birth, empowers our discipleship and enables our witness.
The Church, the body of Christ, both local and universal, the priesthood of all believers—given life by the Spirit and endowed with the Spirit's gifts to worship God and proclaim the gospel, promoting justice and love.
The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to fulfil the purposes of God, who will raise all people to judgement, bring eternal life to the redeemed and eternal condemnation to the lost, and establish a new heaven and new earth.

In light of the Equality Act 2010, we clarify our doctrine as follows: We follow the teaching of the Bible that all sexual practices outside the heterosexual marriage of one man and one woman are sinful and wrong; this includes:

Bigamy, adultery and pre-marital sexual relations (see Genesis 2:24, Exodus 20:14, Matthew 19: 4-6, and Acts 15: 20.)
Homosexual practices (see Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:8-10.)
Pornography (see Matthew 5:28- 29).

The Bible teaches us that the love of God extends to all people regardless of their actions, but also teaches that we must not be actively or passively complicit in sin (see 1 Timothy 5:22 and 1 Samuel 2) and that faith without works is dead (see James 2:17).

It is, therefore, part of our doctrine that we in no way condone, promote, assist or encourage any of these practices. Which includes, but is not limited to, the hiring out of premises or facilities for activities organised by third parties.