What We Believe:

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We believe that there is one God who created everything. We believe He is a good Father; that He is kind and gracious and always ready to embrace those that turn to Him. We believe that He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and totally unhindered in all His works and plans. We believe this One God has always existed and will always exist as three Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We freely acknowledge that there is great mystery in this, and that we do not fully understand it. Nevertheless, we believe it is the unwavering testimony of Scripture.

We believe Jesus is the one and only Son of God, that he was born of the virgin Mary, that He was fully human and fully divine, and that He is the perfect expression and living embodiment of God’s incomprehensible love. We believe he was executed by the Romans, but that God raised him bodily from the dead, and he has ascended into heaven. We believe Jesus came to make peace between God and humanity, and there is no path to this peace apart from Him. We know some are offended by this notion, but it is not our intent to be needlessly offensive. We believe this is the testimony of the Bible, and that it lays on us a holy obligation to walk in humility and to be serious about loving our neighbors so that we do not become obstacles to the spread of the truth.

We believe the Holy Spirit awakens the human heart to an awareness of sin and renews this awareness in the heart of believers that go astray. We believe the Holy Spirit gives and preserves saving faith, and that only the Holy Spirit can sustain this faith through the whole course of a human life. We believe the Holy Spirit builds and sustains the bond of love between all believers, a bond that transcends barriers of language, culture, race and even time.

We believe the local church is the visible expression of God’s work on earth, and that it should be governed locally so that it is always free to pursue its vocation. We also believe the whole Church is the Bride of Christ, and that it consists of all true believers of every tribe, tongue, place and time - including those with whom we have sometimes disagreed. We believe Sunshine Baptist exists to build up the whole church, to the Glory of Christ alone.

We believe Christ will return at the end of time to fulfill God’s plan for history. When He returns he will make all things new, and everyone who has ever lived will be resurrected: some to live with God forever and others to live in eternal separation.

We believe the Bible is Holy, it is God’s word to the church and to individual believers. It is a beautiful, precious, and unique witness to all of God’s saving acts and their culmination in Jesus.  It is totally true and accomplishes all of God’s aims without exception or error.  The Bible is is the only supreme and final authority for what we believe and how we live.

We believe Christ has commanded Baptism and The Lord’s Supper as visible signs of His work. Through believer’s baptism we participate in a visible and outward sign of an inner reality: that we have been joined with Christ in his death and raised with Him to walk in a new way of life. In the Lord’s Supper we participate in a visible and outward sign of the inner reality of our faith: that Christ’s body was broken and his blood shed for the salvation of sinners. In each of these signs we also perceive a promise: that Christ died not just for sinners, but specifically for us, and that we will rise to eternal life when He returns. We do not believe these signs have the power to save people from their sins, but we do believe that Christ is at work in them; through them He ministers to His church and shapes the human spirit to walk in faithful obedience. We believe it is unwise to take any of Christ’s commands lightly, to treat them as afterthoughts, or to consider them as merely optional.

We believe the Father sent the Son, and that the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. We believe this one, holy, and triune God sends the Church into the world for His glory and the salvation of souls. We believe our vocation is to join this work of God, wherever and whenever we perceive it: we are sent to preach hope to the hopeless, rest to the weary, God’s love to the unloved, and in and through all these to glorify Christ. We are a church that wants to pursue this obedience in every way that God leads, even in ways that stretch and challenge us.

We believe in paying attention to our roots, not only as Baptists, but also as Protestants, and as orthodox Christians who are part of the majestic and ongoing history of God’s mighty saving acts. This means we think the historical practices and perspectives of the church, both recent and ancient, provide important resources for interpreting the bible, ordering our worship, and living the Christian life. However, while we believe this history can be helpful, we also believe all traditions, practices, and perspectives are subject to the authority of Holy Scripture, and that they must never become a legalistic burden on the conscience.