What We Believe
Welcome
Babylon Church is a non-denominational church in Atlanta. We're a community of people trying to follow Jesus together. This page is a summary of what we teach and why.
If you're new to all of this, or coming back after a long time away, you're welcome here. So is everyone else.
The Gospel
We believe The Gospel is good news!
God made us in his own image (Genesis 1:27). We broke our relationship with him through our own sin (Romans 3:23). Jesus came to repair what we couldn't. He lived the life we couldn't live, died the death we should have died, and rose again on the third day so that we could be made new (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That is the message we keep preaching, week after week, because we never stop needing to hear it.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
How We Live This Out
We worship together on Sundays. We meet in smaller groups during the week, in homes and coffee shops, to study Scripture and pray with one another, trusting Jesus's promise that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he is there among them (Matthew 18:20). And we try, however imperfectly, to be present and useful to the city we live in.
Our Statement of Faith
What follows is a summary of the doctrinal convictions that shape our teaching and our shared life as a church.
Scripture
We believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God. The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are without error in everything they affirm and are the final authority for what we believe and how we live. "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16).
In our teaching, we use the English Standard Version.
The Triune God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each Person is fully God; God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4, Matthew 28:19).
The Father is the source and sustainer of all things. The Son, who was with God in the beginning and was God (John 1:1), became flesh, lived a sinless life, died on the cross in our place, rose bodily from the grave, and reigns now at the Father's right hand. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer and produces in us the fruit of a transformed life (Galatians 5:22-23).
Humanity, Sin, and the Need for a Savior
Every human being is made in the image of God and bears inherent dignity and worth (Genesis 1:27). Every human being, apart from Christ, is also separated from God by sin and unable to save themselves (Ephesians 2:1-3). The gospel meets us in this exact place: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
The Doctrines of Grace
We affirm what the Reformers called the doctrines of grace, sometimes summarized by the acronym TULIP:
Total Depravity. Sin has touched every part of us. Apart from God's grace, we cannot save ourselves (Ephesians 2:1-3, Romans 3:10-12).
Unconditional Election. Before the foundation of the world, God chose a people for himself, not based on anything they would do, but according to the good pleasure of his will (Ephesians 1:4-5).
Limited Atonement. Christ's death accomplished salvation for his people, not merely the possibility of it. He laid down his life for his sheep (John 10:14-15).
Irresistible Grace. When God calls a person to himself, his Spirit brings them home. "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out" (John 6:37).
Perseverance of the Saints. Those who are truly in Christ are kept by Christ (Philippians 1:6, John 10:28-29).
These doctrines aren't a system to argue over. They're a description of what God has done. Salvation is his work from beginning to end.
Baptism and the Lord's Supper
We affirm two ordinances given by Christ to his church: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism by immersion is the public sign that a person has been united to Christ, buried with him into death and raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-4). Communion is the family meal of the church, and we share it together regularly as Jesus instructed his disciples on the night he was betrayed (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
The Church
The local church is the primary way God makes disciples in the world. The church isn't a building or a program. It's a people. Jesus said to Peter, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).
Babylon is led by a plurality of elders, who are qualified men called to teach, shepherd, and pray for our community. This pattern of male eldership is what we believe Scripture teaches (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9). Women serve in nearly every area of ministry at Babylon: teaching, leading, counseling, discipling, and shaping the life of the church alongside the elders.
The Mission
Jesus gave the church a commission: "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" (Matthew 28:19-20).
That mission shapes everything we do as a church. We're called to share what we've received, both with our neighbors here in Atlanta and with people we may never meet on the other side of the world (Acts 1:8).
Our Name
The name Babylon comes from the book of Jeremiah. When the people of God were carried into exile in Babylon centuries before Christ, Jeremiah wrote them a letter telling them not to retreat from the city that had taken them in. "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce... seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:5-7).
We took the name in that spirit. We're a church that believes the followers of Jesus are called to live faithfully inside the cities and cultures we've been placed in, not above or apart from them. Atlanta is the city we've been given. We're here for it.