Community

At FPC, we have all sorts of people (just check out the slide show on the home page to see for yourself).  When you walk in on a Sunday, you’ll see some people that look like your grandparents; you might be sitting behind a child who is a little fidgety; you’ll likely have an Auburn student on your pew; and, chances are, you will see some people who you might not normally choose to hang out with.  And this is just the way we like it.

While there are times for and benefits to being around people in our phase of life, we think that it is equally important for all of us to be together, to walk alongside one another and to teach and encourage one another. Therefore we try to foster this inter-generational community in everything we do.  To us, this is a grand privilege of life in light of the gospel - we look forward to, but also live right now in, the new and perfect community of comprised of people of every tribe and tongue that God is redeeming for himself.

Predestination

Expository Preaching

At FPC, we like our pastors and elders.  We think that they’re nice, well-intentioned, called people.  But the key word there is people.  They are sinners as much as the rest of us, with no more of a pipeline to God than the rest of us.  Therefore we don’t think that they, out of their own wisdom, have any ability to stand before us and wax on about politics, morals, our marriages, our bank accounts, or anything!  Therefore, we are committed to expository preaching.

What in the world is that?  It just means that we seek to take out (exposit) of a particular passage of the Bible what it says, rather than trying to put into (deposit) a passage our own ideas or themes.  Our practice is to go through books of the Bible, since this helps us to keep passages in context and protects us from making them mean what we want them to mean, rather than what they actually mean.

We don’t think that this style is inherently better than every other style, but we do think that it reflects well our core conviction - God is faithful and powerful to speak by His Spirt through His Word in a way that will be far more valuable and powerful than anything our preachers could ever dream of doing.

For more on our take on preaching, check this out: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1792_What_I_Mean_by_Preaching/.

Reformed Theology

The Reformed tradition, which did not begin with John Calvin but traces its roots through him, affirms the sovereignty of God over all things (including you and me and our salvation).  At FPC, we believe that the Reformed tradition is the most faithful, consistent and God-glorifying understanding of the Christian faith.   We believe that it protects us from confusing the American dream (with hard work you can be what you want to be) or the Auburn Creed (I can only count on what I earn) with the gospel:  since we have been justified (or, declared ‘not guilty’) through faith, we have peace with God.  We think that there is a reason that Paul did not link our peace with God to our obedience or to our morning quiet time - because our standing before God on a day to day basis does not depend on anything we do but on what God has done for us in Christ! And we think that there is a wonderful result of that - freedom.