Fellowship Baptists are followers of Jesus Christ who stand in the historical stream of the Protestant Reformation. We have a strong adherence to the great Christ-centered doctrines of the Reformation with their emphasis on the Bible as the living Word by which we encounter Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. Along with this central focus on the Word comes the recognition that the Triune God Himself, Father, Son & Spirit, is sovereign in salvation; that salvation is wholly by grace ~ the gift of God.
We relish the way that J.I. Packer expresses this working of God in salvation ~ “…there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology (the study of God’s salvation): the point that God saves sinners. God ~ the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son & Spirit; working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of the Father and the Son by renewing. Saves ~ does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory; plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners ~ men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners ~ and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point which… [soteriology is concerned to establish]… namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory forever; amen”
Given this firm conviction that it is God who works in us His good pleasure for our good end, we live our lives in joyful dependence on Him who is our Life and our Hope and our Rock and our Refuge. We do not live out this dependence passively; rather we live actively in community with all who seek to walk in the Way by following Jesus, learning to know Jesus better through the practice of the Christian life in relating to and caring for others.