WHAT WE BELIEVE


Saint David’s Anglican Church is an ancient-future community, one that is rooted in the historical creeds and practices of the Christian faith, while also maintaining an evangelical and charismatic spirit of worship that helps us orient ourselves to what God is doing in our culture today but also leading us to a renewed world that awaits us in the future.   

 

The center of our belief is the saving death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. The authority for this faith is both the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament looks to the coming of Jesus, and the New Testament recounts his life, death and resurrection and future return. We believe that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for life and salvation.

 

The good news of the Christian faith is that we are loved by God and, though we have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, we are forgiven, saved, and restored to the glorious life intended for us as we believe in the death and resurrection of Christ. By receiving His free gift of salvation and trusting in His goodness and mercy, we are empowered by the Spirit to walk in Him all the days of this life, and into eternity.

 

The Holy Spirit is given to witness Christ’s love to the world. He makes us more like Christ by developing godly characteristics like love, joy, patience, peace, and humility. He also empowers us with gifts and abilities for ministry. We believe that the ministries of the Holy Spirit seen in the New Testament operate in the Church today and we welcome their orderly expression in love and humility.


Most of the tenets of our faith are found in the Creeds of the Church:

The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and The Athanasian Creed.

STATEMENT OF FAITH


Saint David’s Anglican Church holds to the Christian faith set forth in the Holy Scriptures and in the Ancient Creeds, as well as in the historic formularies of the Anglican Church, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and The Book of Common Prayer 2019.


Saint David’s adopts the following statements taken from the Jerusalem Declaration:


1. We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things.

2. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.

3. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

4. We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

5. We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.

6. We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.

7. We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.

8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

9. We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.

10. We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.

11. We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.

12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.

13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.

14. We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history, we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.