New Westminster United Reformed Church

Our Name:

New Westminster: We are here to promote and proclaim the glories of Christ's kingdom in this city through our words and our lives.

United: We recognise the importance of having shared fellowship and accountability with churches of like faith. We are affiliated with the United Reformed Churches of North America

Reformed: We strive to be formed according to the Word of God revealed in Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We embrace the biblical doctrines rediscovered during the 16th century Protestant Reformation and expressed in the Reformed Confessions known as the Three Forms of Unity

Church: We are a congregation of sinners saved by the Triune God - chosen by the Father, cleansed in the blood of Christ the Son, and gathered by the Holy Spirit. We confess the historic Christian faith handed down to us by the Apostles and summarised in the three time-tested Creeds.

Our Story:

Christian

Our story begins the same as other Christian churches that submit to the authority of the Scriptures and find their foundation in the writings and preaching of the prophets and apostles, of which the cornerstone is Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:20).

With all Christians in all times and places, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that there is only one God who exists eternally as three Persons -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- and that Jesus Christ our Saviour is both true God and true man. These are the historic truths confessed in the great creeds of the Christian faith.

Protestant

During the 16th century Reformation, men such as Martin Luther (d.1546) and John Calvin (d.1564) combated errors that had overtaken the Roman Catholic Church. They rejected the claims of the pope to be the head of the church acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Head of His church which He governs by His Word (the Bible) and Holy Spirit, not the dictates of men.

With our fellow Protestant Christians, we believe that salvation is revealed in Scripture alone and is received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone unto God's glory alone. These "alone" statements are the "Five Solas" of the Reformation:

Scripture alone: Our ultimate authority and foundation for faith and life is Scripture alone.

Grace alone: We are saved by God's all-powerful and free grace.

Faith alone: God accepts us into His loving fellowship when, by faith, we trust in Christ and all His benefits.

Christ alone: It is not our faith that saves us but the Christ in whom we trust. We are not saved on the basis of our good deeds but on the basis of His finished work on the cross.

God's glory alone: Our salvation is the work of God from beginning to end. To Him alone be all the glory!

Reformed

As a Reformed Church, we are a subset of Protestantism. The Protestants who followed Luther's teachings were called "Lutherans" while the Protestants who differed with Luther in several ways and followed Calvin's teachings were called "Calvinists". However, the so-called Calvinists preferred to speak of themselves as "Reformed", which was a way of saying, "Churches that are (re)formed according to the Word of God".