Confession of Faith

In the fall of 2019, a group of elders formally launched Trinity Fellowship Churches. From the beginning it was determined that it would be an intentionally “Confessional” denomination of churches. To them this meant being tied to a written Confession of Faith that would be what the ordained elders in TFC regard as “sound doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:10; Titus 1:9; 2:1). That is, the Confession of Faith would be a summary of what they believe, teach, and defend.

Since the Reformation there has been an established pattern in churches to start such confessions with an existing one and then modify it only as needed. TFC adopted this same approach and began with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. The 1689 takes the Puritan and Reformed Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) with the modifications of the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration of Faith (1658) and then adds its own Baptistic nuance in places like the covenants and the sacraments.

Similarly, TFC took the work of the 17th-century Reformed Baptists and then modified it. One change was to modernize the language, which included adjusting the vocabulary and sentence structures to make them more in line with modern conventions. A second change was to add chapters on Man (5), The Empowering Holy Spirit (10), and Mission (33). For Man (5) this was felt to be necessary because many assumptions made about anthropology and gender in the 17th century do not hold throughout the culture today—even in Christendom. The Empowering Holy Spirit (10) was added to capture our Continuationist perspective. Mission (33) was added to make more explicit our commitment to evangelism, discipleship, and church planting in fulfillment of the Great Commission and the missio dei. There are also paragraphs added in The Church (28) to reflect our convictions about elder-led churches that are also deeply connected together for their mutual benefit, strength, protection, purity, and mission.

Our commitment to our Confession of Faith is not in any way meant to replace our commitment to the Scriptures themselves. Our Confession is simply a summary of what the TFC elders believe is taught in the Bible. It is the Bible and the Bible alone that is divinely inspired. All of this is saying nothing more than what our Confession itself says in a paragraph only slightly changed from the original Westminster Divines in the 17th century themselves:

The final judge for the examination and judgment of all religious controversies, decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits can be no other than Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit. Our faith must rest when Scripture speaks. Trinity Confession of Faith 1.10