What we believe

Here is a brief overview of the beliefs that unite the Laurel church of Christ as a body of Christ’s followers.


We Are a Family
Even though we come from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, we are all the family of God. Our membership is diverse in a number of ways, but we all come together each week to worship God and to build each other up so we can carry out the work that God has planned for his people.


We Believe in One God
We believe in the one God revealed in the Bible. We believe God the Father sent His son, Jesus, to be the Savior of mankind by living a sinless life, dying on the cross, and rising from the dead. Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us.


We Believe That the Bible is God’s Word
We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and that it contains everything we need to guide us in our daily lives as we seek to do God’s will. Our desire as a congregation and as individual followers of Christ is to "speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent." We are committed to studying God's Word to see how we should live our personal lives and how we should serve God together as his people.


We Believe That the church is the Body of Christ
We believe the church is made up of God's people on earth. Jesus is our head, and we are His body Ephesians 5:23. We do not seek to be a denomination; we merely want to be the body of our Savior.


We Believe in Salvation by Grace through Faith
We understand that we are saved only by God’s grace through faith and that there is nothing we can do to earn salvation. Saving faith is demonstrated when we repent of our sins and are baptized (immersed into water) as a participation in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection (see Romans 6:3-5; Galatians 3:26-27). This, of course, is just the beginning of our new life in Christ.


We Believe That Christ Will Return to Claim His Own
We look forward to that day when Jesus will claim those who are His and take them to live with Him. Jesus will return in the clouds and His followers will rise to meet Him in the air and ultimately be with Him forever (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).


We Believe That the Bible Sets the Standard for Our Worship
Visitors to our worship services will notice in particular two aspects that may strike them as distinctive: a) our singing is a cappella,  i.e., unaccompanied by musical instruments and, b) we take the Lord’s Supper every week. This is not because we simply prefer doing things this way over some other way, but rather because our study of the New Testament and history has led us to these practices. Our public worship assemblies are also characterized by prayers, a message from God’s word, and a collection each week to support the work of the church in reaching out to the community and the world with the gospel and acts of service.

overview

When you travel or move to a new area, it can be tough to find a congregation that is faithful to biblical teaching but doesn’t bind opinions or traditions. If you share the same goal, we think you’ll find the church in Laurel, Maryland, to be a place you can work and worship.


We are a growing a cappella congregation overseen by four elders and served by eight deacons, three full-time ministers work with the congregation. We have two Sunday morning services to accommodate our growing congregation. We currently average over 300 between those two services. Life Groups meet most Sunday evenings except during the summer and on the third Sunday night of each month.


We have an active women's ministry which operates within the biblical teachings of male leadership. Our women serve in many important ways (we'd be lost without them) but not by leading in our worship services.

The Laurel church is an evangelistic congregation. We are active in mission work both locally and in more than a dozen foreign locations.

If you’re looking for a church in which you can do more than just sit on a pew, come visit and we’d be happy to sit down and talk with you about the church and how you fit into what the Lord is doing through his church in Laurel.