VictoryBy Terry Green

Members of my church, Victory Baptist in Casa Grande, Arizona, unanimously adopted revised values, articles of faith, a covenant, and bylaws in January. That’s the headline. The backstory is where all the work happened.

In 2014, we made a commitment to begin the process of updating our church documents to more clearly explain our beliefs and to protect the church from certain attacks common in our culture. First we registered to participate in the Regular Baptist Web Community class on rewriting a church’s statement of faith, led by Dr. David Mappes of Baptist Bible Seminary, and Dr. John Greening, national representative of the GARBC. Both men provided wise counsel and gave us a framework to begin our work. We are deeply indebted to them for their instruction and insight.

Mappes encouraged the participating pastors to make their churches’ statements of faith the property of the congregation, not merely of the pastor. While I had already wanted to coordinate the revision with Victory’s deacons, I also wanted to enlist multiple leaders and eventually every member, to get their fingerprints all over the documents, to accurately reflect the congregation of Victory Baptist Church.