We are a community in the heart of the city called by Jesus to practice bold love of God and neighbor and boundless compassion for all people.
That’s it, in its simplest, truest form. This is what the people of First Baptist on Fifth call our Vision Statement. It is, as one pastor once said, “the shape of our obedience to God.”
Our Values
WORSHIPING FAITHFULLY
LIVING NEIGHBORLY
WELCOMING AUTHENTICALLY
GIVING ABUNDANTLY
LEADING COURAGEOUSLY
ENGAGING ARTISTICALLY
RECONCILING HUMBLY
RISKING WILLINGLY
WALKING WITH THE HURTING
MATURING IN DISCIPLESHIP
BELONGING TO GOD AND EACH OTHER
BEING TRANSFORMED TO DO GOD’S WORK OF LOVE
Our Priorities in Ministry and Mission
CULTIVATING THE WELL-BEING OF CHILDREN
MITIGATING POVERTY IN OUR COMMUNITY
BECOMING A TEACHING AND LEARNING CHURCH
GROWING IN NUMBER AND FAITHFULNESS
Confession of Identity
Short of belonging within this beloved community of faith, the best way you can get a sense of who we are is by reading our Confession of Identity. We wrote it together—yes, actually all together, not just by committee!—in the fall of 2021, and it captures our church’s identity, spirit, commitments, and hope for our bold future ahead.
It is a historic Baptist principle to resist any ‘creed’ (a formal, binding statement of belief) but instead bind ourselves to Word (Jesus) and words (the Bible). Therefore, the tool of ‘confession’ has been used throughout Baptist history to capture a broad consensus of distinctives in faith and practice. In the same spirit, our church’s Confession of Identity is not a binding document demanding that every member agree to every word, but rather a snapshot of our shared callings by God in this season and how they form us as a particular community of faith.
Read on, and catch a glimpse of us. Perhaps you can see yourself right in the midst of it all!
HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR CONFESSION OF IDENTITY
Bold Love
Our love for God and neighbor calls us to welcome, affirm, and celebrate all people in the fullness of who they are: beloved for their differing ages and races, sexual orientations and gender identities, means and sufferings, physical and mental abilities, levels of education and backgrounds, cultures and nationalities, doubts and beliefs. Why? Because God’s love knows no boundaries, therefore our love shouldn’t either.
The Gifts of Membership
We believe that any person who professes faith in God through Jesus can share in the gifts of full membership of First Baptist on Fifth, including baptism, communion, marriage, covenant with children and their families, ordination of deacons, ordination to the gospel ministry, celebrations of life, teaching, worship leadership, and pastoral care.
Confession & Lament
We lament that the witness of the church in our own time is divided and confusing, often betraying the very heart of God, the life-giving way of Jesus, and the liberating movement of the Spirit. Christ’s love compels us to confess the Christian church’s complicity in exclusion and division, and at times we have been negligent, indifferent, and silent in the face of injustice.
Belonging
At the core of our community, we are folks who love each other well: bringing our true and honest selves, seeing, knowing, and caring for each other in that fullness, overcoming barriers that would otherwise separate us, and finding grace on the other side. Yes, sometimes it’s messy, and yes, sometimes we disappoint each other. But because we know the sting of loneliness and the salve of belonging, we are choosing to knit our lives together, time and time again.
Living Neighborly
Our downtown home isn’t just a city block in which our building sits. Rather, downtown Winston-Salem has become the place that shapes our priorities, our resources, our relationships, our imagination. Here, we are from, and from here, we are sent.
Boundless Compassion
We seek to practice boundless compassion for all people by lifting the lowly, caring for the poor, pursuing and amplifying the voices on the margins of life, calling out injustice wherever we see it, extending our care for all of God’s creation, and working for the freedom of the oppressed. Our boundless compassion flows outwardly to our neighbor and inwardly to ourselves, for each of us is in need of God’s liberation from all that holds us captive.
Calling
In this season of our church’s life, those shared callings have opened our minds, hearts, and lips in cultivating the well-being of children, mitigating poverty in our community, becoming a teaching and learning church, and growing in number and faithfulness. These callings have prompted our deepening work for racial justice, our embrace of LGBTQ individuals and families, and our commitment to equity and inclusion for all people.
Practicing Our Faith
We practice because we’re learning to be more honest than we are and more loving than we have been. These practices help us remember who and whose we are. They orient us with intention away from our tendencies of scarcity and towards God’s gifts of abundance. They surround us with other practitioners on the road, so we know we are never alone.
Hope
Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever!