We exist for the honor and glory of Christ through worship, prayer, and Christ-centered fellowship, to lead each individual to spiritual maturity and involvement in Christ’s Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the teaching of the Word of God in its entirety.
TCGF was founded as a small, independent and autonomous home church community in Eyers Grove in 1985. Spiritual and physical growth of the church led to a move to a bigger space in Jerseytown, followed by a second move to our current, larger land in Iola in 1992, formerly an abandoned Methodist church. Our current building was finished in 1998 and the old church building is used for various small group gatherings and events.
Our church body has been blessed with biblically sound leadership since its founding, with our current pastor, Mark Boyer, being installed in January 2024 following the retirement of our long-time Pastor Emeritus, Paul Converse, Sr. We are also blessed by the participation of many of our founding members and their families in the current church body and leadership, seeking to blend our rich history with the hopeful future in store for TCGF in the 21st century.
We believe that God is one God, infinite in His attributes, and existing eternally as the Triune God: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, in the beginning, created all things, with each member of the Trinity present. Our Triune God existed before the beginning of time and will continue to exist and reign forever. God is the One who planned and determined the root of salvation.
God the Son is Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, by whom all things were created. He is God’s only begotten son, pre-existent with the Father as a member of the Trinity. Conceived by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, Jesus as God became a human being, and He lived a sinless life as fully God and fully man, ultimately shedding His blood and dying on the cross as our only substitutionary sacrifice for sin. On the third day, God the Father raised Him from the dead, and He ascended into heaven to the right hand of God the Father, where He intercedes for us as believers. We currently await His promised return to raise the righteous to eternal life, defeating sin and the devil once and for all and inaugurating the eternal state and the new heaven and earth. Christ is the Head of the Body of believers, the Church.
God the Holy Spirit was sent into the world to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, to guide believers into all truth, and to bring glory to Jesus Christ. Those who belong to Jesus Christ and have truly believed in His saving work are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and we are given the fruit and gifts of the Spirit to build up and edify the body of Christ, the Church. We do not accept or condone the practice of “speaking in tongues” as evidence of in-filling of the Holy Spirit in today’s age, seeking rather to listen intently for the voice of the Spirit in our lives as Scripture teaches.
The Bible is the Word of God, final in its revelation and authority, inspired by God and therefore without error in all that it teaches. The two parts of the Bible, the Old and New Testament, are deeply interconnected, with the word of promise in the Old fulfilled in the New in the person of Christ and His work. It is our final authority and guidance on which we base our faith and our life as a Christian.
We believe that man was created by God in His image, as men and women, woven together by the breath of God from the moment of conception. However, because of man’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, man failed to maintain the holy condition in which he was created, therefore leading to the entrance of sin and death to the human race. Our sin nature separates us from God with no hope of eternal life, apart from faith in the Lord Jesus and His blood’s atonement.
Man’s sin nature separates us from God with no hope of eternal life, apart from faith in the Lord Jesus and His blood’s atonement. By Him, and only Him, can a person be born again and is reconciled to God for eternity. These gifts of salvation and eternal life are free from God by His grace, not a result of anything we can do by our own strength or works. Through faith in Jesus Christ, man may approach God with freedom and confidence.
The Church is the Body of Christ, made up of born again believers from all tribes, tongues, and nations. Local congregations of the Church are to meet regularly for the purpose of worship, teaching, correction, training and fellowship. The mission of the Church in this age is to carry out the Lord’s command to evangelize the world; therefore, it is to remain separate from the State with a God-given purpose. One day, when Jesus returns, He will take His Church, His Bride, to be with Him forever, rejoicing Him alongside one another in eternal life.
The Lord Jesus commanded His followers to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Water baptism is an important ordinance which symbolizes the believer’s union and identification with the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as a new commitment to walk in obedience to God and His Word. Only those who have placed their faith in Jesus are eligible for baptism. We believe in a mode of baptism by immersion to help illustrate this important identification with Christ’s death and resurrection.
The believer is the temple of the living God; therefore, believers need to purify themselves from everything that contaminates body, soul or spirit. It is not by our works that we are saved, but our actions are an important indicator of the inward change of our heart upon salvation by faith. A true believer is one who is seen to walk in obedience to the Lord in all things, recognizing that we will mess up as sinful beings, but leaning on God for forgiveness and seeking to obey Him with a right heart.
God instituted marriage at the beginning of human history when He created man and woman. Marriage is designed by God to be the union of one man and one woman for life. The husband/wife relationship should be one of mutual submission: the husband loving his wife as Christ loved the Church, and the wife submitting to her husband in everything. We believe the concept of being “equally yoked” is important to a healthy Christian marriage, seeking to be united with a fellow believer with shared values and a desire to obey the Lord together.
