Having committed your life to Christ and been baptized, the next step is to commit to being part of a local body of believers - a church. If after spending some time with us you feel that Western Avenue is the best place for you to invest your gifts for the Kingdom, we welcome you to meet with one of our pastors and express your desire to become a member.
You may join BY FAITH, accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. Then, following the example of Jesus, be baptized as the public profession of your faith.
You may join BY BAPTISM if you are coming from a church in another denomination and have already accepted Jesus Christ as Savior but have not yet been baptized by immersion.
You may come BY LETTER, which means to transfer your membership from another Baptist church. We will contact your previous church and notify them of your desire to transfer membership.
You may join BY STATEMENT OF FAITH if records of your membership in a Baptist church are unavailable or if you were previously a Baptist and are now coming from a different denomination.
About Jesus
In the beginning God created everything, including us. When He made us, we were perfect people in a perfect world who had a perfect relationship with our Creator. It didn't take long, however, for us to choose our own way over God's - which is the definition of sin - and in so doing, we lost our connection to God. Our sin separates us from the holy, perfect, loving, and just God who had made us and brought us the ultimate consequence - death.
Though God was just and could not ignore our sin, He did work through history to prepare us for His ultimate plan to remove the chasm between us and Him. In His perfect timing, His son, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, gave up all that was His in heaven to come to Earth as a baby. Born of the virgin Mary, Jesus lived the sinless life that we did not have the ability to live, and ultimately gave His life on a Roman cross as one sacrifice for all the sin of those who believe. Having been dead in the grave, He rose again to life on the third day and forty days later ascended to heaven to reign over creation until He returns publicly and bodily at the end of days.
We come to Jesus by faith, not works. This act of God's grace is sometimes called being "born again" or "getting saved." It is through this new birth that Jesus Christ's righteousness is credited to us, restoring us to God and giving us the ability once again to enjoy Him and make His name great forever.
Baptism
When Jesus began His ministry, He went to John and was baptized in the Jordan River. It is here that God the Father declared to Him, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." At the end of His earthly ministry, before Jesus ascended to heaven, He told His disciples to "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
It is in obedience to this command that to this day we baptize new believers as a public profession of their faith in Jesus Christ. At Western Avenue, we baptize believers in Jesus by immersing them completely in water after they have made a decision to follow Him and chosen to make that decision public. This not only represents dying to the old self and arising to new life in Christ, but mirrors the way in which Jesus himself was baptized.
Talk With Us
Want to join or hear more Email us or call us to start the conversation.