• "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!’” —Abraham Kuyper

• “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” —Matthew 28:18

• “And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” —Ephesians 1:22

We rejoice that Jesus Christ is not a private savior hidden behind the doors of our personal prayer closets or confined within the walls of any church building. Rather, He is a public Person, “King of kings and Lord of lords” and the “the Ruler of kings on earth.” This present reality means that Jesus is over the families, the governments, the rulers, and the politics of all nations, and He is “to be feared by the kings of the earth.” As the Church of Christ, we are not only commanded to “make disciples of all nations”, but also to “teach them to obey all that [Christ] has commanded.” Christ is just as much the Ruler over the public realm as he is the Ruler over our individual hearts, and so it is a paramount Christian duty that “we must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst.” This is accomplished in no small part by bringing God’s law and Christ’s gospel to bear in every sphere of our existence.

Cross and Crown Reformed Church is to become a “mission church” of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. A CREC mission church is a church under the oversight of another CREC church as it moves toward meeting necessary criteria to no longer require external oversight, but rather be governed by its own local Session (Board of Elders).

For more information on the CREC, click on the CREC Website button below.

To understand better what to expect at a typical CREC church, click on the CREC-What to Expect button below. (Our church may not be exactly as described, but there will be a strong resemblance.)

Cross and Crown Reformed Church formally adheres to three historic Christian creeds and the Three Forms of Unity (1619 AD). The creeds we affirm are The Apostles' Creed (2nd Century AD), The Nicene Creed (381 AD), and the Definition of Chalcedon (451 AD). We consider these to be a clear, authoritative summary of our core doctrinal beliefs, derived from the Bible.

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” —Romans 12:10-13

“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” —Colossians 3:12-17

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.” —Matthew 10:34-36

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

Therefore go out from their midst,

and be separate from them, says the Lord…” —2 Corinthians 6:14-17

True churches are “voluntary associations of the saved.” “Church”, so to speak, is a time and place for Christians to gather together and worship the One Triune God, “and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” While we heartily affirm the Christian duty of evangelism in keeping with the Great Commission, we simultaneously deny that the gathering of believers for the Lord’s Day service exists principally for the purpose of evangelism. Again, the Lord’s Day service exists for the glorification of God and the edification of His people, and so it should not be conflated with an evangelistic effort for the sake of unbelievers.

Since we affirm this reality, we reject all forms of seeker-sensitive worship or compromised teaching to include “Third Way” theology, syncretism, “worshiptainment” etc. At Cross and Crown Reformed Church, we are committed to “rightly handling the word of truth” and we pray for the courage to “not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Our primary purpose as it pertains to people is to feed Christ’s sheep with the milk and meat of God’s word— not to draw flies with honey.

“Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;

bring an offering and come before him!

Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;” —1 Chronicles 16:29

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws into their minds,

and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.” — Hebrews 8:10

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” —1 Corinthians 12:12

Why do we come together on Sunday? Simply put, we come together in corporate worship for the renewal of God’s covenant with us, His people. (The Bible uses the word “covenant” over 300 times throughout the Old and New Testaments to describe how God relates to His people.) For a basic order for our Sunday services, we look in the Bible to the distinctive way God has covenanted with His people. We find in the Bible a fivefold sequence and structure:

1. Call - God takes hold of His people and calls them out to worship.
2. Confession and forgiveness - God reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice for the remission of our sins and we freely confess of those sins. God assures us of His forgiveness brought by the finished work Jesus did at the Cross. He reassures us of His love for us.
3. Consecration - God speaks to us through His word and the Pastor’s preaching. We respond by offering ourselves as living sacrifices and our gifts as further fitting offerings.
4. Communion - In this— the pinnacle of our time in worship— God invites us to commune with Him at His covenant meal. We memorialize Christ’s covenant and celebrate His abundant provisions and steadfast love.
5. Commission - God sends us into the world with His blessings. He charges us to extend His kingdom over all creation, making disciples of all the nations. We are dismissed from God’s special presence renewed and ready to do His work.

• “Did He not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.” —Malachi 2:15

• “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children…” —Acts 2:38,39

• “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.” —Deuteronomy 11:18-21

We believe the Christian nuclear family is the basic covenantal unit in the Kingdom of God on earth. Christ welcomes children to Himself, desiring that they be consecrated to God in baptism, and fed and strengthened at His table during the Lord’s Supper. Israel’s covenant children passed through the waters of the Red sea, and the same children ate the Passover to strengthen them for the exodus. Thus we affirm and practice paedobaptism (infant baptism) and paedocommunion (child communion), being unwilling in deed or conviction to exclude Christian children from these means of grace based on age or development.

In the same spirit, we will practice family-integrated worship where our children are encouraged to participate with their parents in all aspects of the Lord’s Day service. We believe that a child’s holistic development—physical, mental, and spiritual—is the primary responsibility of his parents, as parents are commanded to “train up a child in the way he should go”, and to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Thus we also strongly discourage the abdication of education or upbringing of covenant children by entrusting them to unbelievers.

“Male and female he created them, and he blessed them” —Genesis 5:2

“For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.” —1 Timothy 2:13

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband…” —Proverbs 12:4

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church…” —Ephesians 5:25

We are committed to Biblical patriarchy as it is described and assumed throughout God’s word. As such, we cheerfully reject the muddled and egalitarian sexual ethics and spiritual androgyny of our culture, in favor of every directive we find in Scripture pertaining to marriage, headship, the sexes, masculinity, and femininity— without apology.

We believe that all legitimate hierarchy has been ordered and established by God in perfect wisdom and benevolence. Thus we acknowledge all Biblical implications of the created order, recognizing the happiness, strength, and fruitfulness of society and individual men and women depends in large part on living according to the reality of this order. It follows that the piety and sanctification of men and women often look different, because “male and female He created them”—the two are not interchangeable in body, mind, or spirit, and have different callings, abilities, and duties.

In this regard:

The husband is objectively and always the head of his household.

Only Biblically-qualified men are to hold Church leadership positions.

Men ought to be the political and magisterial leaders in their communities and nation, with few and rare exceptions.

Women are encouraged, exhorted, and celebrated in their calling and duties as described in Scripture (Titus 2, Proverbs 31, etc.), especially in the blessed and vital calling of motherhood.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.” —Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

“The world is sleeping in the dark

That the church just can't fight

'Cause it's asleep in the light

How can you be so dead

When you've been so well fed?

Jesus rose from the grave

And you, you can't even get out of bed

Oh, Jesus rose from the dead

Come on, get out of your bed” —Keith Green

We believe professing Christians today need to understand “what time it is.” Too many are living passively and nicely, as if there is not a spiritual war raging around them that endangers their own and countless other souls. Too many are forging a faux peace with the hostile world around them by denying the offense of the gospel, flattering the enemies of the cross of Christ, extending cheap grace and false love— and justifying all of this in the name of Jesus. We recoil from participating in such compromise, heartily believing it is better to die fighting for God’s truth and Christ’s kingdom than to live comfortably under willful blindness. As such, we acknowledge our time is not a time for peace, but for cheerful spiritual warfare; not a time to keep silence, but to speak; ours is a time to love the truth and “therefore hate every false way”. It is a time to cast away the failed, idolatrous propositions of secular modernism and keep hold of the Lord Christ. At Cross and Crown Reformed Church, we will strive to be like the worthy men of Issachar, “who had an understanding of the times” and a readiness to act accordingly.

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.” —Psalm 33:12a

“Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath is quickly kindled.” —Psalm 2:11,12

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” —1 Timothy 2:1,2

“We owe no subjection to prejudice and passions, or to actions commanded by these disordered powers, because they are not from God, nor his ordinances, but from men and the flesh, and we owe no subjection to the flesh.” —Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex

We acknowledge that all men are religious by design, and that politics are the civil realization and practical outworking of religion. Thus we as Christians deny that politics can be morally neutral, and so there are many political positions that are incompatible with the Christian faith. In our current two-party system, we reject the notion of moral equivalence between party platforms, as the platform of the Left is built entirely from planks obnoxious to Biblical justice and morality, and are abominated by God. At Cross and Crown Reformed Church we do not believe that contemporary or “Christless Conservatism” is enough, because it has failed to conserve many points of natural and Biblical truth, law, and reality. Thus we heartily embrace Biblical Conservatism, which affirms every civil, ethical, and moral principle found in Scripture to inform our politics; in our current system, this will usually put us to the right of the Right. We support and encourage gifted Christian men who are called into the political arena to obtain and wield civil and political power for the protection and flourishing of the global Church of Christ, true religion, and our fellow countrymen. We also encourage Christian private citizens to faithfully participate in the political process out of love for neighbor, Church, and nation.