MEET OUR MINISTER
SERMONS
GIVE

Located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Steamboat Church of Christ is a place of worship for those seeking thought-provoking sermons,

and fresh messages with scholarly insight every week.

AUTHORITY OF THE WORD

At the Steamboat Church of Christ, we receive the Bible as the supreme written norm by which the conscience of the believer is to be bound, and by which the church is to be governed in all matters of faith and practice. Study tenaciously that you may present yourself as one qualified to represent God—a skilled artisan, having no cause for shame—rightly discerning the Word of Truth. (2 Timothy 2:15). We are a low-church tradition, which means that we believe the authority of the church is subject to the authority of the Word.

THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE WORD

We believe that the Word of God is divine in origin, and that the autographs of Scripture are both inerrant (they do not err) and infallible (they cannot err). While this is affirmed by the Apostle Paul—All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)—our faith in the reliability of the Bible is based, not on its self-affirmation, but on the teachings of Christ, who commends both the Old Testament and the New Testament to us as the veritable Word of God. We acknowledge that the words inerrancy and infallibility are loaded with historical baggage, and may be subject to misapprehension. For clarification of both what is affirmed, and what is not affirmed, in the claim of biblical inerrancy, we have found the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy to be quite helpful.

THE LITERALITY OF SCRIPTURE

The Bible is a very large book, containing material from many dozens of authors, and incorporates many different forms of literature—including, but not limited to: allegories, apocalypses, astronomical records, attendance records, autopsies, birth records, blessings, calendrical systems, casus belli, censuses, civil codes, combat reports, commandments, compacts, confessions, contracts, court records, covenants, crime reports, criminal codes, currency exchange policies, curses, death records, dialogues, diaries, diets, dream interpretations, employment records, engineering disaster reports, epistles, family stories, food safety guidelines, foreign policies, funeral rites, furniture design, genealogies, geological records, gospels, governmental models, historical narratives; how-to guides on: animal husbandry, mold abatement, water purification, lie detection, exorcism, prayer, warfare, marriage, business management, dispute resolution, architectural design, land management, crop rotation, civil disobedience, child rearing, interior decorating, landscaping design, and lighting design; hymns, international treaties, interpretation of prophecy, interstate commerce agreements, inventories, jokes, judicial protocols, laments, laws, legal records, love songs, marriage records, medical journals, medical records, menus, military records, narratives, national holiday declarations, numerical systems, oracles, ordination rites, parables, parodies, paternity suits, payrolls, personal property valuation guidelines, poetry, political speeches, prayers, pre-nuptial agreements, priestly ceremonial codes, priestly dress codes, property deeds, property descriptions, prophecies, proverbs, psalms, public health policies, public notices, purification rites, ransom notes, recipes, regional stories, rules of war, sabbatical principles, sacrificial rites, sales receipts, sermons, shipping manifests, social policies, stewardship guidelines, tax codes, thalassic records, thanatopses, theophanies, trade policies, trial transcripts, unguentary formulas, venereal codes, veterinary records, visions, weather reports, welfare policies, wills, worship protocols, and botanical and zoological taxonomies. The word literal means by the letter, and we believe that Scripture should always be interpreted literally, in the sense that every passage of Scripture ought to be interpreted according to the norms of the literary style in which it is put forth, and according to the principles of grammatico-historical exegesis.

SOUND DOCTRINE

When interpreting the Word, we are persuaded, as the Apostle Peter tells us, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20). With this in view, when it comes to any doctrine, we aspire to take the whole counsel of God on any matter into consideration. Scripture is to interpret Scripture. No doctrine based on a single Scripture can be considered sound, and no doctrine that takes account of only part of the counsel of God can be accepted. We are not bound by any command or prohibition of the Old Testament, but we do believe that the Old Testament—which is our tutor—reveals a great deal about the mind of God, and that its teachings rightly inform our understanding of the New Testament.

WATER BAPTISM

We are fully persuaded that all who believe are justified by their faith. However, salvation consists of more than justification—sanctification is also required—and faith alone does not sanctify. To be justified is to be counted as righteous, but to be sanctified is to be made actually righteous—actually sinless. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and all the other named in Hebrews 11 believed, and their faith was counted to them as righteousness. However, according to Hebrews 11:39-40, These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received the promise, for God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. And what is the promise? What is that which perfects believers? Sanctification through the reception of the Holy Spirit and an outpouring of power from on high, which power is grace—the life substance of the Incarnate Christ. And the normative means set forth in Scripture by which the promise is secured is baptism (Acts 2:38; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Titus 3:5). Accordingly, we urge all believers to be baptized, by immersion, for the forgiveness of sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, according to the Scriptures.