Distinctives: We believe that what matters most in any church is that it is walking in faith, is in loving obedience to Jesus’ teachings, is making disciples through a combination of the public exposition of Scripture and personalized training, is active in spreading the Gospel, and holds to historic Christian orthodoxy. Beyond these essentials, what makes our church distinctive is that we try to follow the traditions of the apostles in our church practice:

1) We celebrate the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s Day as an actual meal. The elements look back to Jesus’ death. The meal looks ahead to the wedding banquet of the Lamb, and is a wonderful time of fellowship (1Co 11b).

2) We have “open mic” participatory meetings where church members can share with the goal of edifying and encouraging others in their faith (Heb 10:24-25).

3) We have a plurality of leaders who rule through congregational consensus.

4) Everything in the New Testament was written to a Roma-villa sized house church, and was designed to work best in smaller settings. Thus, we are intentionally smaller rather than larger. Compared to other churches, we look to many like a reed shaken by the wind, and we’re OK with that. You can find out more about New Testament church life at NTRF.org.

The Importance of Relationships:

Our church is relationship based. First and foremost is each member’s relationship with the Lord Jesus. Next is our relationship with each other as brothers and sisters in the same heavenly family. This emphasis on relationships does not mean that we believe doctrine to be unimportant. In the essentials of the Faith we believe there is to be unity. In the non essentials we believe there is to be liberty (Ro 14 & 15). We leave it up to each father to decide about these nonessential issues and lead his own family in them. Our church is in relationship with the Greater Atlanta Baptist Network and the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

Beliefs: The Atlanta Reformation Fellowship is decidedly in alignment with historic Christian orthodoxy and ethics. Inquiring minds will want to know that our leaders hold to the doctrines of grace, new covenant theology, the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy, the Nashville Statement on sexuality and the Danvers Statement on biblical manhood and womanhood. Our elders’ favorite statement of faith is the First London Baptist Confession of 1644. We are also in agreement with the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. You don’t have to hold to these positions to fellowship with us, but understand that you will hear these things discussed with enthusiasm.

 

In sum, our church is committed to meeting and living out as simple as possible a reading and understanding of what the New Testament church gave us for a pattern.  We know we don’t have it all figured out yet. We’re sure we get a lot wrong. We are a work in progress! We tend to take issues one at a time and attempt to come to a biblically-based consensus before moving on. Everybody counts and ideally nobody gets run over or discounted. This means we sometimes move pretty slow, but with a high degree of peace and unity.  For that we have been blessed and are grateful.