Our Beliefs and Values

The Trails Terrain (Values)

We Treasure Christ - Like the man who found the treasure in the field, we treasure Jesus Christ more than everything we have and do.

We Make Healthy Disciples - We believe the Bible calls us to make disciples of Jesus Christ. This includes the costly calling of following Jesus and the life lived together obeying his commands. As the early church met daily in homes and in the community, we meet throughout the week to pray, study God’s Word and break bread together.

We are Prayerfully Dependent - We achieve nothing on our own but wait in prayerful dependence on God to act in our midst. We pray together in our services and meetings for the needs of our congregation and the needs of the world. We pray that God’s WILL be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We Prioritize God-Exalting Worship - The purpose of our gathering on Sundays is to exalt God in all of his glory. We sing songs Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs as a congregation for the worship of God, and the building up of the body. We preach expository sermon through books of the Bible.

We are Missionally Unified - Our Mission is the Great Commission. God called the church to reach every tribe, nation, and tongue with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We can accomplish that right here in Dayton and partner with other churches to reach the unreached all around the world. In order to fulfill the great commission we believe that in essentials we promote unity and in non-essentials we promote liberty.

We are Servant Leaders - We are led by a plurality of qualified men who serve the church as pastors. The congregation has the ultimate authority, but appoints pastors to lead them in the mission of the church. The role of the pastors is to equip the members of the church to do the work of the ministry— not to do the ministry on their own.

We are a Diverse Family of Believers - We are committed to being a diverse family of believers in: age, ethnicity, gender, personality and more, as we come together to form one unified body of Christ with many parts. We hold church membership with high regard. We covenant together as believers of one body to fulfill the “one anothers” of scripture.

We are Sacrificial Givers - We do not keep all of the gifts God has given us for ourselves, but we give what we have to needs in our church, to our community, and to Great Commission efforts around the world. Giving is not only a financial opportunity, but we strive to give our resources, talents, and time out of the love we have for God and his creation.

Our Covenant

We, as members of Trails Church, desire to walk in faithful allegiance to God, the king and creator of the universe, who is supreme over all, and exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. 

We are guided by the inerrant, Holy Scriptures, which are authoritative in the life of every follower of Jesus.

Therefore, we covenant with one another in the following ways: 

We will gather together weekly in corporate worship.

We will grow together as a family through weekly fellowship and discipleship opportunities.

And we will go together to fulfill God’s redemptive plan by proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom in our community and to the ends of the earth.

Praise be to God.


Our Beliefs

Adopted from the Gospel Coalition Confessional Statements. We also adhere to the Ecumenical Creeds of the early church, the 1853 New Hampshire Confession of Faith, and the Baptist Faith and Message (2000).

  • We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is worthy to receive all glory and adoration.

  • We believe that God has inspired the words of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. These writings alone constitute the Word of God, utterly authoritative, without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do.

  • We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to significant engagement in family, church, and civic life.

  • We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness – for himself and all his progeny – by falling into sin through Satan's temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being and condemned to death-apart from God's own gracious intervention.

  • We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end he foreknew them and chose them, all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.

  • We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ – God's very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news centers on the cross and resurrection of Christ.

  • We believe that, moved by love, the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified, rose on the third day and ascended into heaven as our representative and substitute. On the cross he canceled the debt of sin and reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death, defeated Satan, and brought everlasting life to all his people. By his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else.

  • We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins. By his perfect obedience, he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God.

  • We believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ and, as "another Helper," is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus.

  • We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world nor become indistinguishable from it. Rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God.

  • We believe that God's new covenant people is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members' love for one another and for the world.

  • We believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. They are God's pledge to us and our public submission to Christ.

  • We believe in the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust-the unjust to eternal conscious punishment in hell and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by Christ, and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.