What We Believe
We dream of a movement of young people transformed by the love of God and sent out to change the world.
Our Vision
Our vision begins with something basic: learning what it means to be a modern day disciple of Jesus. We believe the journey to knowing Jesus deeply will move our lives in three directions.
These movements shape our individual lives and the life of H2O Church. As we walk with Jesus as a community, our lives moving in these directions, we believe God will make Himself known to us and to this campus.
Upward
We want to connect the gospel to people. We were not made for token belief but for radical worship. Whatever our spiritual background, we want to encounter God and learn what it means to worship Him in every area of our lives.
Inward
We want to connect people to community. We were not made to seek after God alone. He created us for relationship, and friendships become places where the invisible God becomes visible to us. We want to be a community of people who live not just for ourselves but for the sake of our friends.
Outward
We want to connect community to mission. We were not made to live small lives. God is renewing the world, and He invites us to join Him. We reflect God’s image and we possess His power as we seek to make Jesus known at Kent State, in our city, and to the ends of the earth.
Our Beliefs
Christianity isn’t something we get to make up. Instead, it is very much something that we receive. It is woven deeply into the fabric of history and it is undeniably tethered to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is why at H2O Church, we affirm the essentials of the historical Christian faith found in the Nicene Creed and Apostles Creed. At our core, we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and from that narrative we affirm the five following tenets.
We believe God created us.
God created us to experience wholeness. A deep wholeness. Wholeness in relationship to God, to others and to all of creation. God’s design was good. He created us so that we might share in his love—a profound love. We were crafted in his image in order to share in the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in God’s likeness that he has created us. Just as a child looks akin to his Father, so we were to reflect the lovingkindness of God. We are the apex of God’s creation. He created us, because he loved us.
We believe God pursues us.
God pursues us even in the midst of our brokenness and sin. After God created us, we chose to be our own god. Put it simply, we sinned against God and in doing so, departed from God’s design. Because of this, we were separated from God. For the first time since creation, we experienced fragmentation, brokenness and utter disunion with God. The effects of sin infected us all. We no longer knew wholeness with God, each other, or the world. We still see the ramifications of sin in our world today. Pain, Suffering and death are all consequences of sin. In our sin, we are tragically separate from God.
We believe God redeems us.
In Jesus, God redeems us from our state apart from God. Jesus came in the midst of our sin in order to rescue us from the wrath of God that we rightly deserved. In our sin, we are enemies of God. God, in Jesus, lived the life that we failed to live and died the death that we deserved. He lived in full accord with God’s design and in his death he paid the penalty for our sin. When he rose three days later, he rose victoriously over the power of death and sin in our world. Forgiveness is offered in Jesus’ death and freedom offered in his resurrection. This is the essential story of the Christian faith. It is this story that we continually remember and rehearse at H2O.
We believe God is with us.
Before Jesus had ascended into heaven, he promised to leave us with a community and a comforter. The church is our community. These are people who have seen the depths of their brokenness and their need for a savior. God’s purpose from the beginning of history has been to dwell among his people and through the Holy Spirit, God is with his people. The Holy Spirit is our comforter. Through the work of the Spirit, each believer is made increasingly into the image of Jesus Christ. And in becoming like Jesus, we believe that we come to closer to how we were created to be.
We believe God sends us.
The church experiences the love of God in order that it might extend this love into all the world. Jesus did not call us to a faith of self-indulgence and comfort but to one in which that we become a foretaste and sign of his coming kingdom. A Kingdom of peace, service and love. The church is God’s vehicle for His mission. Thus, the church does not exist for itself, but for the sake of the world. This is the fundamental purpose of the church as we await the second coming of Jesus when we believe everything will be as it ought to be in the world. As we await this reality, we partner with God in order to pursue restoration and healing in our world.