About Trinity Baptist Church
Mission Statement
To disciple individuals in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and equip them to minister and witness with loving, caring hearts.
What We Believe
• We exist to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ to our community and world. We are committed to the proclamation of the Gospel, the study of the Bible, the building of Biblical relationships, defending the eternal Truth of God, the practical expression of God’s grace and the provision of opportunities for serving the living Christ.
• We believe in One and only One living and true God. God is eternal, sovereign, immutable, creator, benevolent, love, merciful, just, righteous, longsuffering. He is all powerful and all knowing and His perfect knowledge extends to all things past, present, and future. God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—with distinct attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.
• We believe the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. It is the final authority for all matters. It is totally true and trustworthy. Jesus Christ is the center and focus of divine revelation.
• We believe Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation, He was conceived of a virgin, lived a sinless life and perfectly revealed the will of the God the Father. He took on Himself humanity and identified Himself with humanity completely yet without sin. He honored divine law through obedience and in His substitutionary death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was buried and rose bodily from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures. He is fully man, as though He were not God, yet fully God as though He were not man.
• We believe the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully Divine. He inspired men to write the Scriptures. Through illumination He enables people to understand truth. He exalts Jesus Christ. He convicts people of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows spiritual gifts by which they serve God through His church.
• We believe Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is part of the goodness of God’s creation. In the beginning, man was innocent of sin and was endowed by His Creator with free will. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Therefore, as soon as we are capable of moral action, we become transgressors and are under condemnation.
• We believe salvation involves the redemption of the whole person, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. Salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
• We believe a New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing two ordinances of Jesus Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ.
• We believe Christian Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• We believe God, in His own time and His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in the glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness.
History
The Acorn Story
Trinity Baptist Church got started under a Brush Arbor built on the original church building site in 1924. It was during one of these open air meetings in September of 1924 that Mrs. W. J. (Mattie) Sapp, one of the charter members, had an experience with an acorn – an acorn that has now become a symbol for Trinity Baptist Church. We are indebted to her daughter, Mrs. Earl (Ruth) Lambeth, for passing on this story to us.
“Mrs. R. L. (Janie) Welborn, Sr., Mrs. E. W. (Nora) Welborn, Sr., and her mother, Mrs. W. J. (Mattie) Sapp, were sitting under an oak tree while attending an open air worship service at the old brush arbor when suddenly, an acorn fell in Mrs. Sapp’s lap. She looked at it and thought a moment. Then, after a discussion with the other ladies, they all agreed that this acorn would be a symbol for their new church – for from a tiny acorn a mighty tree would grow. So, from a small beginning a great church would develop that would be a continuing blessing through-out the community and to the ends of the earth.”
Through the years Mrs. Sapp saved that tiny acorn in a small match box. One day Ruth asked her mother, “Mother, why do you keep this acorn?” Her mother replied, “Some day, the people at Trinity will build a big church building and they may want to put this acorn in the cornerstone.” This answer gave evidence of her mother’s vision and dream for Trinity Baptist Church. Mrs. Ruth Lambeth came by our church building on March 6, 1978 to present this acorn with its story so that it might be placed in the cornerstone of the new sanctuary building.
On the day of our ground breaking, after the pastor had related this story, each person present was given a similar acorn as a souvenir of the occasion. Later, when the new sanctuary was dedicated, the small box with the symbolic acorn was placed in the Church History Box in a place fixed for it at the entrance of our new building.
The Dedication Service for the new building was held on Homecoming Day, May 27, 1979 in the church’s 55th anniversary year.
Worship attendance was estimated at 350.