New Castlewood Baptist Church

New Castlewood Baptist Church is a place where you can feel free to come and learn about the Christian faith without being in fear of being judged. Even though we are small, we welcome visitors to our church, and would love to have you come and worship with us. We know coming to a new place can be intimidating, and we want to make your visit as comfortable as possible, while remaining true to the scriptures. These are answers from Pastor Matt.
Here are some FAQs about our church:
Q. What do I have to wear?
A. You don’t have to worry about wearing a suite or dress. You can come in blue jeans and a t-shirt, we don’t care about outward appearances.
Q. What kind of Church music do you have?
A. We like to mix it up with hymns and contemporary worship music.
Q. Do you have a children’s ministry and youth group?
A. Yes! We have wonderful teachers at NCBC that want to teach Children the Bible and Christian life. It is so critical that children get good sound biblical teaching at a good age.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." -Proverbs 22:6
Q. I don’t really know if I believe in God… is it alright just to come and check it out?
A. Definitely. Believe it or not, belief in God is not a requirement to visit our Church! Shocker! We are a local church in which it is alright to ask questions. I might not always have the answer, but I am willing to help you find the answers, with us working together.
Q. Do you believe in speaking in tongues?
A. “If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.” – Saint Augustine
Does the Bible teach about speaking in tongues… yes! Is this simply believers speaking in other languages as representation of the Gospel going throughout the entire world… yes. Is it a private prayer language? Yes.
Greek Word study on the word used for ‘speaking in tongues’:
glóssa: the tongue, a language
Original Word: γλῶσσα, ης, ἡ
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: glóssa
Phonetic Spelling: (gloce-sah')
Short Definition: the tongue, a language, nation
Definition: the tongue, a language, a nation (usually distinguished by their speech).
HELPS Word-studies
1100 glṓssa – tongue, used of flowing speech; (figuratively) speaking, inspired by God, like the evidence of tongues-speaking supplied by the Lord in the book of Acts to demonstrate the arrival of the new age of the covenant (i.e. NT times).
[The normative experience of the 120 believers received "tongues (1100 /glṓssa) as of fire" (Ac 2:3) and miraculously spoke in other actual languages, i.e. that they could not speak before (Ac 2:4f). This sign was repeated in Ac 10:46, 19:6 – furnishing ample proof (three attestations) that the Lord had incorporated all believers into Christ's (mystical) body (1 Cor 12:13).]
Q. I want to go to Church, but I am living pretty bad right now, or have a bad past, can I come to your church?
A. Please do!! I think that you will find that the hero’s of the Bible had some pretty messed up life situations too, and God still loved and used them. Moses killed somebody, Peter lied about following Christ, David had an affair, ect. God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.
Q. Do I really need to go to Church? Can’t I just worship God at home?
A. Jesus said in John 14:15, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments.’ Hebrews 10:25 states: “25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” The concept of Christians worshiping in a community of fellowship is taught all the way throughout the Bible. There is no biblically defensible argument for rouge Christian faith. We are the Church, and Christ will return for his Bride the Church. Much can be written about his topic, but this the gist of the teaching of the Bible.
Q. Are you going to judge me or ‘preach at me’? I heard Baptist do that…
A.You don’t have to worry about being yelled at…. We don’t yell (some of you might know what I am talking about). We are not concerned about ‘preaching at you’, we are only concerned about study of the Word of God, worship to an Almighty God, and fellowship of believers.
Q. What version of the Bible do you use?
A. We read, preach, and teach from the King James Bible. We think that it is great English translation with a rich history in both England and the United States. We do that in order to stream-line corporate worship.
We believe in the inerrant (without error) and authoritative Word of God. The Bible is inerrant in the biblical autographs (the original documents written by Apostolic origins, the original Greek and Hebrew texts), and because we speak and read English we use the best English translation for corporate worship that we can.
Q. How do I know the Baptist is the right denomination to go to?
A. Here people of all denominational backgrounds are welcome. The term ‘Baptist’ is a pretty broad term, and can mean a lot of different things. There is Free Will Baptist, Independent Missionary Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Southern Baptist, ect.
We are a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, and hold to the standards of the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. For those Bible nerds, that means that we are Reformed in our theology. For the lay reader, that means that uphold the teaching of ‘eternal security’ and ‘perseverance of the saints’. This is the traditional teaching of the Church that goes back to the Protestant Reformation, the split from the Catholic Church in the 16th Century. The Reformation was not about splitting from the Catholic Church, but was about bringing the Catholic Church back to its Biblical roots of the 1st Century Church. Many ‘Baptist’ Churches out there claim to be ‘old school’, but we are really ‘old school’ but in the best way, we love people more than unbiblical traditions.
Here is a link to the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 for more detailed information of our beliefs:
http://www.1689.com/confession.html