Our Vision
That the people of Stevens Point and central Wisconsin might GLORIFY and ENJOY God!
Our Mission
That God would be glorified and enjoyed, Good Hope Presbyterian Church will make disciples through Word, sacrament, and prayer and live as a covenant community.
We exist for our triune God.
We joyfully confess that all things are from God, through God, and to God. To him be glory forever! The foundation and direction of our faith is our triune God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one God in three Persons, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, existing eternally in perfect love and blessedness. Through the gospel, our God is uniting a people to himself, that we may dwell with him in eternal joy. The greatest blessing of the gospel is knowing God! The existence, identity, unity, and mission of the Church all find their origin and direction in our God. We exist to glorify and to enjoy him!
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” ~ Romans 11:36
“You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God; I will extol you.
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!” ~ Psalm 118:28-29
We make disciples through Word, sacrament, and prayer.
Our triune God often chooses to work in extraordinary ways through seemingly ordinary things. At the heart of the ministry of the Church are the ordinary means of grace which God has given for the purpose of gathering and growing his people. God gathers disciples from the world through the faithful proclamation of the gospel. God grows disciples through the faithful reading and preaching of his Word, the administration of the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s supper), and prayer. Our goal is not to be merely innovative or do what seems most effective to us but to pursue faithfulness to the ordinary means through which God has promised to save, meet with, and transform his people.
“And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” ~ Acts 2:42
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” ~ Matthew 28:19-20
We live as a covenant community.
Christians are not called by God to live as isolated disciples but as members of Christ’s body, the Church, with the desire that every distinct body part would work together to build up the whole body in love. As a people bound together through faith in Christ, we desire to live as a covenant community, sharing in one another’s gifts and graces through generosity, fellowship, service, peacemaking, and mutual edification, under the oversight and shepherding care of godly elders. By this love for one another, the world will know that we belong to Christ and have been loved by him. It is in this community that the children of believers are raised through teaching and example to know, trust, and love our God. It is also through this covenant life that God’s people are best equipped and positioned to practice hospitality and love their neighbor well.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ~ John 13:34-35
“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” ~ Ephesians 4:15-16