Our beliefs 
We believe:
- In one God in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
- The Bible is God’s Word, our final authority on all matters of faith and behaviour. It is completely trustworthy.
- All humanity is fallen and sinful and needs rescuing from sin in order to know God and find freedom, forgiveness, life and hope.
- God provided this rescue through Jesus, the Son of God, who died to save us. He paid the penalty for our sins, dying in our place, to atone for our sins. He is the one and only Saviour, the only way to God.
- Everyone who trusts in Jesus, turning away from sin and towards Christ and asking for forgiveness, will be saved.
- Jesus rose again, giving us hope beyond death.
- The Holy Spirit is with us now – to change and renew us, to make us more like Jesus, to equip us to live for him, to lead and guide us, to comfort and encourage us.
- The church is the body of Christ, to which all Christians belong. The local church is a part of this.
- One day Christ will return and we will all see him face-to-face and give an account of our lives.
It’s not possible to include everything here about us and the Christian faith, but we hope these give you some idea of where we stand and what are our main priorities.
What is a Baptist church
Baptist churches have much in common with many churches of other Christian denominations (e.g. Anglican, Methodist, Pentecostal, etc.) A Baptist church - one of the Baptist denomination – generally has distinctive priorities or emphases in its belief and practice, which are common to Baptist churches.
Some of the most important areas we emphasise at RBC are as follows:
- following Jesus. He is the centre of our life and worship, as our Saviour and Lord, and we encourage people to know him.
- teaching the Bible, worship and prayer as the central activities when we gather together and to guide our lives.
- believer’s baptism and Church membership. Baptism is a practice based in the Bible, in the New Testament particularly, where adult believers who publicly confess to following Jesus were baptised by immersion in water. Church membership is a means for people to express their commitment and belonging together as a local Church, with Jesus as the head of the Church.
- mission – the command from Jesus to go and make disciples, both locally and globally. We actively support a range of mission activities and individuals. But every Christian is a missionary!
- the ‘priesthood of all believers’, another way of saying that all believers are equal under God. From this follows a model of church decision-making and leadership that makes decisions as a whole church gathered together, in the Church meeting. We also appoint a leadership team to provide direction and oversight.
As well as being a Baptist church we are an evangelical church, a member of the Evangelical Alliance. An evangelical church is one that relies on and trusts what the Bible says and aims to follow it as God’s Word as our guide for life.
As a Baptist church we are affiliated to the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) and also our regional association, the London Baptist Association (LBA).