What we believe
We believe there is only one God, our creator.
We describe God as a ‘Trinity’ of Father, Son and Holy Spirit because that’s as close a description as we can get with our human understanding.
We believe that, as Christians, we are called to be a community where everyone is valued and everyone has a part to play.: that we are here to help one another as we seek to follow the example that God gave us in the life of His Son, Jesus.
Jesus’ example also shows us that we are here to help you, whether you are a Christian or not, but our hope is that you will come to know Him and to love Him yourself.
We believe that the Bible is a book that carries God’s authority. We acknowledge that parts of it are difficult to understand and that we can only hope to understand it fully with the help of God’s Spirit
How the church is run
The United Reformed Church (URC) was set up with the specific objective of working towards the visible unity of the whole Christian church. It was a voluntary union between the majority of churches of the Congregational Church of England and Wales, the Presbyterian Church of England, and, more recently, Churches of Christ and the Congregational Union of Scotland .
We are a conciliar church! That means that the ultimate decision-
We are not a democracy. Whilst we make decisions by taking votes, we do our best to come to a decision which everyone feels is right and we trust that in our unanimity we have discerned what God would wish us to do.
Practically this means that decision making can take a long time but it does mean that once a decision has been made, we work together because we have all agreed the way forward.
We also have a council of Elders, members of the church who are elected and ordained to provide leadership and care in partnership with the Minister.
We keep in touch with other United Reformed Churches in the East Midlands through Synod meetings, roughly every 6 months. Locally, we welcome opportunities to work together with other denominations to the glory of God in Ilkeston.