What We Believe

Trinity Community Church exists to make gospel-centered disciples of Jesus who love God and live for others in community.

Our vision is to see hundreds of people in Lake County transformed by the gospel, loving God, living for the joy of others, and making disciples of Jesus in their neighborhoods and communities.

The Gospel

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Gospel-Centered

The Gospel is the central message of the Bible and the central transforming truth of all we are as a congregation. The gospel is objective truth, it is experiential grace, and something we look through as we grow in Christ-likeness. Our other values of WORSHIP, COMMUNITY, and MISSION are shaped by this core value.

All of God

At Trinity Community Church, we believe that God is one being that exists in Three Persons. Far more than just some philosophical riddle, this is the way that God has revealed Himself in history, as the Father and Creator, the Son who becomes one of us for our redemption, and the Spirit who draws us into the life of God and empowers his people. Because of this, we seek to celebrate and delight in all of God, as He has made Himself known: holy, loving, convicting His people of injustice, delivering us from our sins and tenderly binding up the broken. The God who is present in each of us by His Spirit also governs the far reaches of space and time.

All of Life

We believe that worship is far more than an event; it’s a way of ordering our lives, a return to our very purpose as humans. We exist for the glory of God, which means worship wasn’t made for humans; humans were made for worship. The Gospel announces that Jesus is redeeming us back to this fundamental purpose and reordering our lives according to God’s way. As members of Trinity Community Church, we want every aspect of our lives to be lived as an offering of worship.

All of Us

God’s purpose in creation and reconciliation was to bring together a community of people who would receive and reflect the eternal love of the Trinity. So when we worship at Trinity Community Church we worship as members of a body. As we sing about the glories and mercies of our God, we sing both to God and to one another. As we listen to and proclaim God’s word, we are formed as God’s people. In communion and baptism we testify to one another what Christ has done in his life, death, burial, and resurrection and what He is doing through our lives. Because we are one body worshipping together, we joyfully submit our individual worship and liturgical preferences for the good of the body.

Together in Life

Here at Trinity we believe in having a covenant commitment to one another, which means a commitment based not on common interests, ancestry, or opinions, but on the common identity we share in Christ. As members of Trinity Community Church, we seek to share our lives with each other, committed to each other through hard times and good, through times of tension and times when friendship comes easy, through times of grief and times of celebration, remaining unified together by the spiritual resources we have in Christ.

Together for Growth

To love one another is to desire each other’s highest good. For us at Trinity Community Church, that means seeking to see our lives transformed by the Gospel and conformed to the way of Christ. Because God has brought us together to anticipate the way of life that he is bringing to our world, we as Christians take responsibility for each other and look out for each other’s growth. We do this without judgment because we recognize that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory; and we do this with loving grace, because we have each been offered immeasurable mercy in Christ.

Together with Difference

At the end of the Bible’s story, we are given a glimpse of the sort of world that God is bringing about, and it is a world in which people from all different tribes, tongues, nations and peoples are joined together under the identity we share in Christ. In Christ our differences can stop dividing us and instead become expressions of the endless creativity and grace of God. This means that at Trinity we equally value men and women and cherish the differences between them. We honor our older members for their wisdom and life experience and treasure the youngest in our midst as gifts from the Lord to our whole church. We want Trinity to be a community where the weak in the eyes of the world – whether physically, socially, economically – are honored more than the strong and where the spiritual gifts of each member contribute to the whole.

Together for the Good

The Gospel is the message that Christ is reconciling people to God through the Cross and restoring Creation through the power of his coming Kingdom. For us at Trinity Community Church, this means that we not only proclaim the Gospel, we demonstrate the Gospel by seeking to see our community resemble the future Kingdom more and more. As a result, we take issues of justice, poverty, and beauty seriously, and strive to contribute meaningfully to our place in the world.

Sent to Be Neighbors

Jesus said that his disciples would be known by their love. Mission begins by building intentional community, right where we are, in our neighborhoods and workplaces and through our shared hobbies. As it was in the earliest days of the Church, bringing Jesus to those around us happens through humble acts of hospitality and love, as Christians share their lives with outsiders. We at Trinity strive to find and create spaces where seekers and skeptics can belong before they believe.

Sent to Be Storytellers

Humans are storied creatures; our lives take on meaning when we recognize them to be a part of a greater narrative. This is part of why the Gospel is so important, because through the Gospel we take part in the ultimate story that God is telling through human history. This means that as we at Trinity Community Church go out on mission, we do so as storytellers. We tell the story of what Jesus has done in the Cross, we tell the stories of what Jesus has done in our lives, and we explain the stories of the world around us through the lens of the Bible’s narrative, recognizing that belief begins as we gradually discover meaning in a transcendent story.

Sent to Make Disciples

Here at Trinity we are not ultimately interested in converts to the faith, if all we mean by that is someone who has prayed a prayer or who marks “Christian” on a census form. Rather, we recognize that Jesus isn’t only saving us from the penalty of sin, but from its power also. He is calling us to become the kinds of people we were meant to be. Because of that, we believe that every member of Trinity Community Church is a disciple-maker, called to intentionally mentor new believers toward a lifetime of apprenticeship to Jesus, even as they themselves continue on that same pilgrimage of eternal life. In the end, the invitation we offer to those who want to know Jesus is an invitation to come and die.

Sent to Cross Barriers

As one of our elders says, just as we go where we’re sent, we also send where we’re not. While all of us at Trinity are called to be disciple-makers, we also recognize that there are others who will rise up to overcome barriers to the Gospel in a way that is entirely unique, and uniquely challenging. Without this work, the Gospel will not make it to all the nations, which is why we highly prize the work of domestic church planters and global missionaries and seek to leverage our resources to support them.

We share these beliefs in common with the Christian Church. We believe that these basic doctrines are taught in both Scripture and the major creeds.  They are essential to Christian belief and practice.  
The Godhead

We believe in one triune God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Deut 6:4; Isa 43:10-11; Mt 28:19; Lk 3:22; 2 Cor 13:14).

God the Father

We believe in God the Father, the Almighty Creator of all the heavens and the earth. He is holy, loving and just (Gen 1:1, 17:1; Is 5:16, 6:3, 43:15; Mt 11:25; Jn 6:57, 8:42, 14:16-17, 16:28).

The Person and Work of Jesus Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man (Jn 1:2, 14; Lk 1:35). We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and rose from the dead, so that His name and work are our sole means of salvation (1 Cor 15:3-4; 1 Pet 2:24; Eph 1:7; Rom 4:25; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim 2:5). We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, where He is now exalted at the right hand of God and prays for us as our High Priest (Acts 1:9-10; Eph 1:20-21; Heb 4:14, 7:25; 1 Jn 2:1).

The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person who is with the Church forever and who teaches the Church and guides it in all truth. The Holy Spirit dwells in all believers and gives varieties of gifts for the common good of the Church. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment (Rom 12:6-8; 1 Cor 12-14; Eph 4:11-12; Jn 1:16, 16:7, 14:26, 16:13; 1 Cor 12:4-11; Acts 10:19-20, 16:6-7; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13-14, 4:30; Acts 1:8; Jn 16:8-11).

Scripture

We believe that the Old and New Testatments are God-breathed and inerrant in the original writings, and that they are the supreme and final authority in faith and life (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19-21; 1 Thes 2:13; Ps 12:6).

Sin

We believe that man was created in the image of God to be holy but that he sinned and incurred not only physical death but also spiritual death, which is separation from God (Gen 1:26-27; Rom 3:23, 5:14; Eph 2:1-3).

Salvation

We believe that eternal salvation is solely the gift of God. All who repent of their sins, believe in the gospel, and receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior by faith are saved. They are forgiven of their sins, declared “not guilty” by God, given a new spiritual birth, and adopted as children of God (Jn 3:3-5; Tit 3:5; Acts 2:38; Eph 2:8-10; Rom 8:16).

The Church

The Church is united in having one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, and one Head, Jesus Christ. The Church consists of all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author and giver of their salvation. God has called the believers in various places to join together into local churches as visible expressions of the Church in order to bring the power, the life, the character and the authority of God into the lives of people (1 Cor 1:2; Eph 1:22-23, 2:19-22, 4:4-6, 5:22-32; 1 Pet 2:5-10).

Ordinances

Jesus Christ commands that we practice baptism in water by immersion (Mt 28:19; Acts 2:38, 10:47-48; Rom 6:4) and the Lord’s Supper (Lk 22:14-20; 1 Cor 11:23-29) as outward signs of an inward, gracious work of God received by faith.

The Second Coming

We believe that Christ will return in the air for His people personally, bodily and soon (Mt 24:30-31; 1 Thes 4:13-18; Rev 22:20).

Final Judgment and the Eternal State

We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved, and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost (Jn 5:28-29; Mt 25:46; Rev 20:11-15).

The following Theological Distinctives are not meant to be divisive, but we do recognize that they set us apart from some Christian churches.

  1. We believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is central to everything we do as a church.
  2. We affirm the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, from beginning to end.
  3. We affirm that both men and women have been created in the image of God and are equal in dignity, value, and worth. God has given men the primary responsibility of leading in both the home and the church.
  4. We affirm the active presence, empowerment, and ongoing work of the Holy Spirit for both life and ministry.
  5. We believe the New Testament teaches that each church and individual Christian has been sent by God to live on mission within their local community. Further, God raises up some to advance this mission globally.

Affiliations

 As a local church, we recognize the need to be in like-minded fellowship with other churches in both our country and around the world. We are affiliated with both The Gospel Coalition and 9Marks, and we affirm the Lausanne Covenant Statement of Faith. 

The Gospel Coalition

The Gospel Coalition

The Lausanne Movement

The Lausanne Movement

30th Anniversary Video

In 2019, TCC marked thirty years since our church began with six couples gathering in an apartment to pray.  Since then, we've seen God do some amazing things and we have suffered some difficult seasons. But through it all, God has been faithful to use our church to advance his Kingdom and spur people on to follow Jesus.  God is telling an amazing story through his people the Church and we want to celebrate TCC's part in it.

In celebration, we put together a video that tells the story of our church, how we started, how we grew, and where we're headed now!