Meet Providence

 

Providence Church is a Reformed Evangelical fellowship of believers whose purpose is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things by proclaiming Christ, faithfully teaching, and living out the foundational principle that Christ is all in all. Our mission can be summarized in the Latin phrase “Omnia et in omnibus Christus,” Christ all and in all.

 

As a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), Providence stands with the church catholic and is committed to the historic Christian faith that was preached by the Apostles, taught by the Church Fathers, preached by the Protestant Reformers, and expressed in historic Evangelical orthodoxy. We believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ changes lives as it is preached with biblical faithfulness and clarity and enjoyed at the Lord's Table. Providence is utterly committed to the inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture as the Word of God.

The gospel can be summarized by five Latin phrases that emerged from the Protestant Reformation as slogans identifying the truth of salvation:

• Sola Scriptura: Scripture is our sole authority for what we are to believe and how we are to live.

• Sola Fide: Salvation from sin is through faith alone in Christ Jesus

• Sola Gratia: Salvation is by grace alone and not by human merit

• Solus Christus: Salvation is found only in Christ’s atoning work on the cross

• Soli Deo Gloria: We are to give glory to God alone by recognizing that all things are of Him and through Him and to Him

 

Providence Church meets for worship on the Lord’s Day at Trinitas Christian School in Pensacola, Florida.

 

Beginnings
Providence began in the fall of 2001 when four families began meeting in homes for Bible study and worship. The Lord confirmed our desire to begin a local church and added to our number. The fellowship called David Bryant as the founding pastor, and Providence Community Church began meeting at Gull Point Community Center in Pensacola, Florida. The church was formally constituted as a local expression of the Body of Christ in April 2002.

 

In January 2003, Providence began meeting at University Parkway Seventh Day Adventist Church and called Alan Stout, already an elder, to be a staff elder. It moved in 2007 to the University of West Florida and remained there until 2008. In late 2008, the saints of Providence extended a call to Pastor Uri Brito, who became the first full-time pastor of the church. The church has found a permanent residence at Trinitas Christian School, where they have met for over fifteen years. Providence continues to be a faithful witness to the gospel of grace in Escambia County.

 

Distinctives

Reformed and Evangelical

Providence holds to the historic Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Heidelberg Catechism and is robustly Calvinistic. We believe that the sovereignty of God is a precious and powerful truth, more than a mere theoretical doctrine but instead a truth in which to root our lives and fellowship. Finding affinity with many branches of Protestant orthodoxy, we are members of the Communion of Reformed and Evangelical Churches (CREC).

Providence is not only Reformed but also Evangelical. We pray that God’s name will be praised by every tribe, tongue, people, and nation as the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed worldwide. We labor to bring the nations into joyful worship of the Living God so that they can discover and glorify Christ as all in all. We are committed to Spirit-empowered proclamation of the gospel here in Northwest Florida, in North America, and throughout the world.

We see ourselves as standing on the shoulders of our fathers in the faith who have bequeathed a glorious gospel to us and as being connected to the true catholic church of Jesus Christ.

 

Covenant Renewal Worship

Worship is not centered on our feelings, proclivities, or tastes. Worship is centered on God and His glory. Accordingly, we worship through biblical forms and historical expressions that place the glory of the Triune God in the very center of our praise. A typical worship service at Providence includes the five elements of call, cleansing, consecration, communion, and commission that make up the covenant renewal liturgy and that contain such forms of worship as:

• prayers of confession, praise, thanksgiving and intercession

• hymns and psalms of praise and faith that tend toward the beautiful, the excellent, and the theologically profound

• confession of our faith through the Nicene Creed

• the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper and the rite of baptism

• reading and preaching of the Word of God that exalts Christ as all-sufficient and that challenges and feeds souls in Him

 

Emphasis on Biblical Families

The church is a covenantal body, and the most basic unit of this covenant body is the family. At Providence, we encourage husbands and fathers to embrace their covenantal responsibility as heads of their homes and to nurture their wives and children as they grow in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We encourage wives and mothers to submit joyfully to their husbands, to be workers at home, and to nurture their children in Christ. Moreover, children are taught to love the Lord their God, to obey their parents, and to seek God’s blessing upon themselves and their descendants. The local church should assist and equip parents for spiritual leadership in their homes but never replace them. Family worship is, we believe, a key to godly homes, and accordingly, we strongly emphasize that fathers lead their families in daily worship in the home.

 

Calendar Preaching

God’s Word calls pastors to preach and teach the whole counsel of God. Therefore, our consistent mode of preaching is to follow the Church Calendar by emphasizing the life of Jesus and the mission of the Church in the Scriptures. While we treasure the lectionary texts, we are not bound by them and preach textual series and thematic sermons.

Three-Office Leadership

The Scriptures call for ministers, elders, and deacons. The local session is composed of pastors and elders. They are the decision-making body of the church. However, in cases outlined in our Constitution, the Session will seek wisdom from the congregation. We believe there is God-ordained wisdom in the company of many.

Church Community

Members of Providence covenant together under God to encourage one another to love God and each other, seeking to edify one another by using their gifts; assisting one another by providing for needs, and together serving the church and community at large. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This is fundamental to our corporate witness before the world.

Statement of Faith

The Westminster Confession of (1646) is our doctrinal statement, with a few exceptions (See our Modifications to the WCF.). The Confession describes what we teach and preach, but the Word of God alone is our authority. The Confession does not define the boundaries of our fellowship; this is the function of our Statement of Faith. We seek to be guided by Martin Luther’s dictum: In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.