The Mission of Tri-City Baptist Church

Exalt... Our first and most important activity is to allow God to have His rightful place of exaltation in our spirit. He has this position whether we allow Him to have this place in our lives or not. However, exalting God means that He is honored and preeminent in all we do. He is first in our thoughts and actions. We do nothing without considering His glory.

...the Triune God... We believe that He is a trinity and that He exists as one God in three Persons. We believe this because Scripture teaches it, not because we can always understand it. He is God and we are not.

...through lifestyle worship... Worship is the act of physical kneeling. Spiritually, we kneel in submission to everything that God tells us to do or be. Our whole life is an act of worship, as we understand worship to be a constant act of submission to His will and not simply the gathering as an assembly for an hour every week on Sunday.

Edify believers... The second most important aspect of ministry is the equipping or building up of believers for their work of ministry. The primary mission of the vocational or paid pastors is to train and lead the non-vocational ministers into their acts of service. The vocational ministers do this by modeling, teaching, exhorting, mentoring, comforting, etc. Vocational ministers or pastors must always be actively involved in soul winning and discipleship, but they do this as any other Christian should do these activities, not because they are a part of a paid staff.

...through correct doctrine... Doctrine is the primary way we, as a body, are built up or edified. Many do not like sound doctrine. They say that doctrine divides. We agree that doctrine divides. Unfortunately, many have divided over non-essentials. Thus giving doctrine a bad name, but Scripture clearly teaches us that sound doctrine is very important. Correct doctrine is God’s way to bring glory to Himself. Sound doctrine is a picture of who God is. We never wish to distort the mosaic that God paints of Himself through faulty doctrine.

...discipleship... We believe very strongly in not just winning people to Christ, but also helping them grow into Christ-likeness. Our mission is to help every member of His Body be conformed more and more to His image. We build people through one on one relationships with other, more mature believers.

...fellowship... We believe relationships are the building blocks to authentic Christian community. We believe in building each member through close and transparent relationships with other believers. We do not believe this hinders the work of God, but rather enlarges it.

...unity... Unity is a clear command in Scripture. In our desire for a pure church, we must never fall to the tyranny of divisiveness or isolation. God calls us to struggle to keep unity in our local church and among other churches. Often, unity is a struggle to those who take God’s commands for holiness and purity seriously, but we cannot give up Scriptural unity simply because it can be difficult to achieve.

Evangelize unbelievers... The natural outworking of a proper position of God, exaltation, and a perfecting placement of believers, edification, will result in public professions, evangelization. This does not mean that we can expect people to just walk up and ask us about Christ. This may happen, but it is rare. We must plan to share Christ’s love. However, when we see God for who He is and we love our brothers and sisters, we will want to share our God with those in our circle of influence. Sharing Christ then moves from being an event we do once a week, as a Church, to a process that naturally flows out of a life dedicated to Christ. The Church-wide outreach once a week is very important, but sharing Christ should not only happen once a week. It should happen all the time.

...through prayer... Prayer is the foundation of every witnessing opportunity God gives us. Anything done in God’s name, without God’s power is useless. Prayer is foundational to every salvation.

...and the proclamation of the gospel. The clear sharing or confrontation of the gospel with the unbeliever is always necessary. Many hope to live a life of Christianity and expect people to just come running to find out why they live this way. While that does happen at times, it is not the normal way in which a person comes to Christ. It is every believer’s responsibility to build bridges to unbelievers so that Christ can be shared. The Church exists to reproduce.