Crescent Hill Baptist Church. . . Louisville, Kentucky

God has called us into being, through Grace and our faith in Christ, to share a life together. As a community, we worship God, disciple each other, and share the Gospel with the world.

1. As a Christian community our faith is grounded in:
   1. one God, Creator of heaven and earth;
   2. who is witnessed in Holy Scripture and fully revealed in Jesus of Nazareth;
   3. and who through the Spirit is active in our world giving us new life and hope, healing wounds and overcoming divisions, and calling us to participate in this redemption of creation.
   
   
2. As a baptist community, we affirm that:
   1. all are free to enter into personal relationship with this God, and each of us individually makes that choice as a free response to God's grace -- we affirm soul competency;
   2. all who respond positively to God's Grace become a part of the Christian community in which all are responsible to and for each other -- we affirm the priesthood of the believer;
   3. each Christian community is free, under the Lordship of Christ, to shape its own life and mission, call its own leadership, and ordain its own ministry, recognizing that God's Spirit is not bound by our often sinful distinctions based on race, class, gender, etc. -- we affirm the autonomy of the local congregation;
   4. leadership in the local congregation is God's gift to individuals for the sake of serving the faith community, and the authority of such leaders is based on service, not status;
   5. we are called to share the Good News of Jesus with the world in our worship, ministry, and mission beginning with our local community and extending to the ends of the earth; and we are free to associate with other Christian communities to achieve together what we cannot achieve by ourselves;
   6. the freedom we insist on for ourselves is a freedom all must have, regardless of their faith or lack of faith, and the best way to insure this freedom is free religious communities in a free state -- we affirm the separation of church and state.
   
   
3. As Crescent Hill Baptist Church, we affirm that all Christian communities are given special gifts of the Spirit and have unique contributions to make to the body of Christ and that ours include:
   1. creative and varied worship services that draw on the best of a variety of traditions, including evangelical and liturgical;
   2. creative and varied educational opportunities which utilize the knowledge, talents, skills, and expertise of our members, giving them the widest possible freedom to interpret and express our faith;
   3. ministries to those who are hurting and vulnerable, both as programs we sponsor and as individual members;
   4. ministries which allow us to express the image of God within us through creative works such as art, music, literature;
   5. a prophetic voice in our community, calling our local community to justice, peacemaking, and the righting of social wrongs.

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