What do we actually believe?
Looking at a friend’s churchplant blog, I realised that it’s common to post a statement of faith for these things. We haven’t done that.
But someone did suggest a while back that people might like to know more about what we believe. When I responded that we subscribe to the 39 articles of the Anglican Church, they responded that heaps of heretics subscribe to those! Something more was wanted.
That’s a tough one actually. The 39 arts are pretty detailed – anything I say here is likely to be more superficial. Certainly not planning a statement of faith bigger than those! Couldn’t I just say we really, really mean it that we believe what the Articles say, and leave it at that? I suspect not…
My best suggestion is to get the flavour of our faith from the things we’ve posted. If you’ve read those and thought, yeah, I like that, then you probably have the same take on the Christian faith that we have. Our vision statement has a stack of theology in it.
Sometimes people are wanting you to align yourself with some movement or other, or give yourself a label. Reformed, or Conservative evangelical or Acts 29 or whatever. We are happy to be aligned with the historic Christian faith as represented by the ancient creeds, and also with the Anglican Church as mentioned above. We’re very pleased to be aligned with St Pauls Canterbury too. That’s probably enough tags for any one group to carry, isn’t it?
What about distinctives? Would that be a helpful way to say what we stand for? How are we different from others? Hmm…
Canterbury Church Plant 
Who are you actually hoping to reach? Active Christians from other churches or denominations? Primarily lapsed Christians? Mostly totally unchurched people?
If you are hoping to reach mostly unchurched people, don’t make it too complicated on your blog. They aren’t going to understand it anyway. Teach them when they begin to attend your church.