HopeLutheran · Linden

What we believe

People of Hope, under the Word.

We are a congregation of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. We do not worship Martin Luther. We honor the man who returned the church to its Biblical roots.

“Missouri Synod” simply names the place German Lutheran immigrants settled in the 1840s. There are now about 6,000 congregations of our church body in the United States. Across those congregations the worship styles vary. God’s Word, Baptism, Holy Communion, and the Apostles’ Creed remain central to all our teaching and preaching.

We believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us, in its entirety, and that forgiveness and salvation come only through faith in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection — as confessed in the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.

Living as people of Hope in Linden

Based upon these creeds, our confessions, and our adherence to the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God in Scripture, we profess the following as necessary for living out the gospel in our community and world:

  1. 01

    We believe in the spiritual unity and equality of all believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

  2. 02

    We believe that the Lordship of Christ requires us as disciples to seek to conform our actions, thoughts, and desires in obedience to Him.

  3. 03

    We believe God creates each person with an immutable biological sex — male or female — that reflects the image and likeness of God.

  4. 04

    We believe God designed marriage as a unique conjugal relationship joining one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, life-long union, and God intends sexual intimacy only to occur within that relationship.

  5. 05

    We believe God endows all human life with inherent dignity, and it must be respected and protected from conception to natural death.

  6. 06

    We believe that we are called in a loving way to preach, teach and confess the truth of God’s Word and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations.

LCMS beliefs
“Hope Lutheran Church exists to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ and develop our lives as His disciples.”

Those words, adapted from the Lord’s command in Matthew 28:19, form a purpose and focus for all we are and all we do.