Our vision

Here's what we give ourselves to at Immanuel. Our vision is as simple as one-two-three. We have...

One aim: to bring glory to God

Two tools: the Bible and Prayer

Three tasks: to reach as many people as possible with the glorious news of Jesus, to build one another up as disciples of Jesus, and to train useful workers for Christ in Brentwood and beyond

 

What we believe

What are the beliefs or doctrines to which we hold? And what is it that we think a church should actually be doing? Those are good questions to think about. Please ask us personally if you'd like to talk this through one-to-one. For now, here's a short answer which we'll develop a bit more below:

"God works in power through the Bible to bring people to know his son Jesus."

As a Christian church our top priority is to listen to what God has to say to us in the Bible. We aim to put God’s word at the heart of everything we do at Immanuel. But what do we believe the Bible teaches? We would describe ourselves as:
 

A conservative evangelical church

This means we affirm a concise summary of the core doctrines of the Christian faith, like that used by the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF). You can see and read this doctrinal basis on the UCCF website. But such a concise summary doesn’t include everything that defines a church and what it believes. So, most specifically, we are:
 

A Reformed church

Our official doctrinal basis is the Westminster Confession of Faith - see here. It’s important to say – you don’t have to know anything about or agree with everything in these standards to be a part of Immanuel Church Brentwood! But they do make clear what will be taught in our church, and how our church will be governed by our elders.
 

Core values

We wholeheartedly believe that the Bible is the word of God. It is inerrant, authoritative and infinitely powerful both to save people from their sins and to build them up as mature followers of Jesus. Here's how Peter, one of Jesus' first followers, described the power of the Bible:

"For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you." (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Therefore, we give ourselves to the prayerful preaching and teaching of the Bible. Our normal custom on Sundays is to practice sequential expository preaching. And we long for all our members to be eager Bible students, that God's Word might rule in every corner of their lives.

We wholeheartedly believe what are sometimes called the doctrines of grace. Human beings are far more wicked than we could ever realise - we are sinful through and through and we deserve God's holy judgement.

But the Lord loves to choose and rescue sinful people by means of the death of Jesus upon the Cross. We rejoice that when Jesus died he took upon himself the judgement of God so that Christian people might be freed from our deserved fate.

Joined in union to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit we know God as our Father and experience his transforming work in our lives while we wait for his new creation.

In Immanuel Church we want to build loving a loving community of disciples who care for and build up one another - and who give themselves to the work of sharing the good news of Jesus with those about them.

We believe that little children can be as much a part of Christ's church as adults. And so we want to encourage Christian parents in their task of bringing up their young ones to know and love Christ.

 

Finding out more 

Our resources section contains talks and papers on various issues to do with doctrine, Christian living, and church mission and membership.