couple of questions

Welcome to the Baptist Board, Richard! You won't need to be on the Board for very long before you discover for yourself that not all baptists believe the same things. You may already know that this is to a large extent due to the way baptist churches are organised. There is no baptist equivalent of the pope or the archbishop of Canterbury, for instance. Each local baptist church is autonomous under God. It may choose to to affiliate itself with a particular grouping of churches, like the SBC in America, or Grace Baptist Assemby or the Baptist Union in the UK, but it does not have to do so.

Generally speaking, the very basics of the faith are agreed upon by most, if not all, baptists - things like Jesus Christ being the only way to God, and the bible being God's Word. But beyond that, there is a great diversity among baptists. Some (like your pastor) believe the reformed doctrines, some don't. Some do believe in original sin, others don't. And so on......

That is a very inadequate answer to your question, I know, but it is a start.

Once again, welcome!

 

Good answer David.

Richard, it sounds like your in a Bible-believing, teaching church that holds in high regard the Scriptures as the infallible, inerrant Word of God. That's a good place to be brother.

 

How do you know that his church is all that? Is it just becaused he used the word "Reformed"?

Not being ugly, just asking

 

Welcome Richard!

We'll try to go easy on you at least for the first 5 minutes or so.

The rules of the board are fairly simply and listed in the "stickies" at the top of each forum.

Wisdom in broaching debatable subjects like alcohol are to search first, please, cause some horses have been beat about to death and alcohol is one of them. The search engine in is the header of each page.

Wisdom in broaching subjects you can't find in a search (or don't have time to glean for) is to spit it out and stand back. :laugh: You must have a thick skin on the debate forums because someone will imply that you are stupid, misguided or just can't read. They won't come right out and say it most of the time, but the implication can make you just as mad. DON'T take the responses here too seriously and don't allow yourself to get mad. Anger clouds the issues. If you don't agree, say so and say why. Someone will tell you why you are wrong and others will tell you why you are right. Just remember that a lot of these forums, this one included, are debate forums. Debate=argue Us Baptist like to argue about as well as we like to eat.

If you make someone else mad at you unaware(or aware for that matter), don't be afraid to apologize. In spite of what I may have implied in a certain other thread that is going on at the moment, I have had to do this occasionally.

Like David said, there are many flavors of Baptist and we all have our own ideas. That, my friend, was my biggest shock when new to this board. Before that, I thought all Baptist believed alike.

We also have some non-dabate forums that are for fellowship only. Read the headers and the stickies to find out which are which.

 

A simple answer would be yes. If the church is reformed then it is biblically sound. Being an SBC church my assumption is that it is a "Founder's Friendly" church relating to the Founders Movement within the SBC. This would mean the church is calvinist, which in turn should mean the church adheres to Sola Scriptura (if it is truly reformed, it does), which means its Bible believing.

Also, noticed I said it "sounded like" rather than is.

 

Nunatak, welcome.

Baptist do believe a lot of things differently, but with some exceptions you'll find that they believe the following.

The deity of Christ
Salvation by grace through repentance and faith
Eternal security
Substitutionary atonement--that is, Jesus died on the cross in our place. He took our punishment.
Baptism of believers only
Baptism as a public testimony of one's conversion
Baptism which pictures the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, with no sacramental value.
Two ordinances--Baptism and the Lord's Supper

Other denominations believe some or most of these doctrines. But taken together, this is what the typical Baptist believes.

You may find some Baptist churches and individual Baptists who do not believe some of these things. They are not representative of the typical Baptist.

It's the other things we generally argue about.



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That's excellent brother. The Founder's group are a great group of men and you can even study in-depth theology with them if you wish. You can learn more about them here http://www.founders.org/

God bless brother