GOD'S LOVE STORY

God's Story is a love story. Surprised? Don't be. God's love Story has you in it. Surprised again? Read on my friend.


God created us to know Him and to enjoy Him. We were designed by God to have a loving and lasting relationship with Him. This perfect relationship was broken when we chose to reject His will in our lives. Our choice to not yield to His authority is called “sin”. Sin results in separation. As a result of our sin, we were separated from a loving and holy God, leaving us to live in a broken and fallen world. We experience that brokenness in our own lives and in many of our relationships, especially in our relationship with God. God’s original design was ruined beyond our own repair. Something had to be done to remove the sin that separates.


Because of God’s great love for us, He put a plan in place that would restore the relationship He intended us to have with Him and with each other. The plan involved sending his son Jesus into the world to restore our relationship with God.

Roughly 2,000 years ago Jesus was born into the humble setting of a Jewish working class family. He was one of us, but He was also different. The Bible tells us that Jesus was “God with us.” In other words, God became one of us; God became man. Jesus said, “I and the Father are One” and “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father”. Jesus spent His short life calling people back into a relationship with God. The call involved turning away from our sin and putting our faith in God and His plan.


Jesus had some pretty bold things to say like, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jesus and His message were eventually rejected and His life work culminated with His death on a cross. Many have asked the question, “Who killed Jesus? Why did He die?” It has been rightly said that it was our sin that put Jesus on the cross. But it was also God’s love for us that killed Jesus.

Ultimately, no one killed Jesus. No one took His life. He wasn’t a victim. He laid down His life by His own choice. Jesus said, “No one takes my life from Me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” He did this because He loves us. He said that He came, “to seek and to save what was lost”. He came, “not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

God’s plan was to take our sin and put it on His own son Jesus Christ. Jesus died in our place. By taking our sins upon Himself, Jesus made it possible for our relationship with God to be restored. During His life, Jesus made some radical statements about God and us. His resurrection from the dead confirmed that He is who He said He is. He alone is able to forgive our sins, to restore our relationship with God and to give us new life because He alone has the power to conquer death. The resurrection gives us hope for this life and the next.


God is calling us back into relationship with Himself. He’s calling us to know, to worship, to experience and to love Him. All we have to do is surrender to His calling and turn our lives over to Him. And that’s how our stories converge at all the churches of our association.


We are a community of people who have accepted and experienced that forgiveness and new life that God offers through Jesus Christ. We invite you to join with us as we passionately pursue our relationship with God and continue our 'stories' together!




To read about the Baptist Faith and Message click here


History of Our Denomination


Southern Baptist roots go all the way back to the Reformation in England in the sixteenth century. Various dissenters called for purification of the church and a return to the New Testament Christian example. These dissenters also called for strict accountability in their covenant with God. One of the prominent dissenters who arose in the seventeenth century was John Smyth. Smyth was a strong proponent of adult baptism and 1609 went as far as to rebaptize himself and others. Smyth's action was a sign of the first English Baptist church.

By 1644, due to the efforts of Thomas Helwys and Smyth, there were 50 Baptist churches. Some Baptists were General Baptists because they believed people choose to be saved and they saw atonement, as general not just limited. Others were referred to as Particular Baptists because they thought redemption was limited to a chosen few. Both groups strengthened the Baptist movement in England.

As the English Baptists struggled with recognition, some began to come to America. They came to America, like other counterparts, to escape religious persecution in England. By the mid eighteenth century Baptist numbers grew even more due to the Great Awakening pioneered by Jonathan Edwards. By 1790, Baptists had began to organize and expand. At this time Baptists organized missionary societies to spread the Christian lifestyle to others. It was these mission societies that led to other organizational structures that would eventually define and make a denomination of Baptists.

By 1830’s tension began to mount between the Northern and Southern Baptists that corresponded with the rift that was growing between northern and southern culture in America. In 1844 these issues came to a peak and the Home Mission Society separated into northern and southern divisions. As a result of this the Baptists in the south met in May of 1845 and organized the Southern Baptist Convention.

The first annual convention of the Southern Baptists was held in 1845. In this convention the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board were established. The purpose of each board is still "the propagation of the gospel," with one board focusing on national issues and the other on foreign issues.

After Reconstruction of the South the Southern Baptists began to thrive, and from Reconstruction to the end of World War I, Southern Baptists had gone from a bunch of unorganized and scattered churches with little in common into a denomination of an even larger number of churches and people sharing both culture and program, and training and mission. By the twentieth century Southern Baptists were a cultural establishment influencing many people all over the country and world.