What is Our Message ?
From its very inception the primary "message" of, what has become, the Ante-Nicene Christian Church has always been to preach/teach "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2); Not only the Gospel ABOUT Jesus Christ but also the Gospel OF Jesus Christ (What He taught). The very Gospel of the Kingdom of the One God and how believers are to have a Living Faith that testifies to the Love, Mercy and Grace of God, our Father, both individually and as essential components of the Body of Christ, His Church.
The message and mission of this Community in Christ is to both reignite within the body of Christ and to set ablaze that darkness in the world with the Spirit of Joy that comes with the actualization of the fullness of Salvation made possible only by the Love of God evident in the life and teachings of Our Lord Jesus the Christ; that same Spirit exemplified within the early Church that "turned the world upside down" and is the foundation of "the faith once for all delivered unto the saints". The Ante-Nicene Christian Church seeks to facilitate and edify within the Body of Christ the "overflowing" of our Faith in God in the total application and actualization of the teachings of Our Lord Jesus the Christ made manifest in the unity and connectivity of the God's Holy Spirit in the lives of the saints.
Our Faith is relational by its very nature! Beginning in God's desire for us to be in eternal communion with Him; then transpiring to Our Lord Jesus the Christ's exemplary life, teachings and revelations providing the means by which the Father's desire for all men to be saved and restored to eternal communion with Him could be realized; then to Christ's establishment of His Church as His "Body" on earth for the sharing of the Gospel of salvation "unto the ends of the earth" and the building up of the faithful in the love of Christ that they would be equipped not only to endure till the end but to live a life filled with the peace, joy and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, lives emanating the victory in Christ, lives exemplifying the fact that the faithful are "more than conquerors" in that the world does not over come them but that they, radiating the love of God in all things, overcome the ignorance that is in the world for His Glory.
It is the mission of the Ante-Nicene Christian Church to take this message of hope, the full Gospel of the Lord and the true nature of the living faith from person to person, house to house, town to town, city to city and nation to nation `til His return and the triumphant establishment of the Kingdom of God for all eternity.
Together we boldly proclaim that the foundation of true Christian unity and catholicity in the faith is and always has been "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2) and we testify against the most unfortunate and egregious historically proven reality of the error and divisiveness of requiring of the faithful any addition of "proclaimed equal import" to this foundation as "a matter of salvation" or as "the basis of Christian communion in Christ".
The ecclesiology of the Ante-Nicene Christian Church is and always has been rooted in that same relational foundation of the teachings of Jesus the Christ. Our form and function is in accordance with that which we see clearly evident within both the Holy Scriptures and in the collective testimony of the Early (Ante-Nicene) Church Fathers. We bare witness to the fact that such is consistent with the will of Our Lord Jesus the Christ as is evident within the lives of those communities in Christ that have embraced the same being living testimonies to the propriety of our ecclesiastical understanding.
We pray that the above statements will prove to both clarify and revitalize, for all who read it, the mission of the collective calling of the Ante-Nicene Christian Church and all those whom God has filled with the Spirit of Our Lord's intentions for His Church.
With the Love of Christ,
+Brother Wm. Eric Thomas