Recently James and I have began work on re-writing LifePoint’s Statement of Faith. In fact, we are so in the middle of working on it, that I can’t even link to our old one. Fortunately for you guys, it looked almost identical to this one. Now, don’t misunderestimate me, there’s nothing wrong with a traditional “Statement of Faith. The problem is that too many people simply copy and paste their statement from other churches who share a similar vision. I’ll be the first to say that LifePoint has been guilty of that in the past. Where do you think I got that link? Of course, if you’re a part of a denomination, then your statement is pretty much written in stone.

As we were putting together our new website, we decided to take an honest look at what was truly worthwhile, and what was just taking up space. As we began to dig, we felt like our “Statement of Faith” needed to either be retooled or done away with. It didn’t capture our personality or culture, and, let’s face it, it was just plain boring. Here is the document that described the most foundational part of our church, our belief structure, and we had copied it almost verbatim from another church. What were we thinking? Honestly, I have no idea. But, we’re out to fix it now. We’re currently drafting a document so amazingly well written that it will make you cry, laugh and go hmmm all at the same time. Well, maybe that’s a slight overestimation of our writing prowess. I can, however, promise that we are going to make sure that we don’t waste our “Statement of Faith” with something that doesn’t capture what God has called LifePoint to be.

Here are some of the questions that we’ve been asking as we re-think our “Statement of Faith”.

  • Why do most statements of faith seem to be written solely to other believers?
  • How would a “Church for people who don’t like church” write their statement of faith?
  • How can we make the statement accessible to people who aren’t familiar with Christianese?
  • Can our “Statement of Beliefs” convey to those reading it something about our personality, culture and the church that God has called us to be?

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a simple question: How long has it been since you re-examined your statement of faith?