Welcome to Grace North Atlanta, Alpharetta GA 30004

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Why Grace North Atlanta is About Grace?

Our Worship location is:
175 Roswell St Alpharetta, GA 30004
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What is a Theologically Driven Church?

Grace North Atlanta focuses on the gospel as the center of our community – in other words, Christ’s work on the cross God rescued us from our brokenness, sin and alienation from God.

Not Politically-driven or Pragmatically-driven

In this sense Grace North Atlanta is a gospel-centered, evangelical church. Unfortunately evangelicals are popularly conceived in the media as being close-minded fundamentalists with uncritical allegiance to political agendas. Grace North Atlanta will never be ‘evangelical’ in that sense. The reason why Grace North Atlanta will hopefully never become politicized is precisely because we are a theologically-driven church rather than being a politically-driven or pragmatically-driven church. At the end of the day, a theologically-driven church does not allow the question ‘What works?’ to be the criteria for all decisions. A theologically-driven church begins with God and is more concerned about what God says on a subject and thinking through the faith in a thoughtful manner than simply adopting the values in pop culture or asking what works.

Courage of Self-Criticism

Grace North Atlanta is a theologically-driven church in that we are committed to a practice of self-criticism which evaluates all of our beliefs and practices by the Word of God. There is a long tradition of describing this conviction with the Latin phrase sola Scriptura – meaning Scripture is our only unquestionable authority. In other words, all other competing authorities can be and should be questioned and evaluated in light of the Scriptures.

A theologically-driven church must have more than simply the ‘content’ of the Scriptures, though, it must also have the courage to follow through in changing or reforming the church according to the Scriptures. As many before us have stressed, the church is a creation of the Word of God (creatura verbi). As a result, the hallmark of a theologically-driven church has always been the courage to critically evaluate and change the church’s beliefs and practices in light of the Word of God.

Theologically-driven churches often highlight common themes found in the teaching of the Scriptures: emphasis on starting and ending with God rather than ourselves, emphasis on the ‘bigness’ or transcendence of God in worship, emphasis on the radical nature of God’s grace in accomplishing salvation for us, emphasis on God persevering with us even in spite of our sin (sanctification by grace).

Using a Written Confession as a Consensus Document

Theologically-driven churches like Grace North Atlanta make practical use of a written confession or statement of faith which serves as a consensus document so that the church can get on to the business of mission in the world. Our confessional statement, the Westminster Confession of Faith, is not something we invented ourselves. It serves as a classic statement of what we believe. It is by no means perfect or comprehensive of all teaching in the Scriptures. And as our written confession it does not undermine the authority of the Word of God but secures our commitment to it in the very first chapter entitled 'On Scripture'. In fact, pastors and elders at Grace North Atlanta can take exception to aspects of our doctrinal standards but because the Confession is a document unifying our community, we require all pastors and elders to make known their differences with the Confession. As a statement of what we believe, it serves both as a pedagogical tool as well as a consensus statement enabling Grace North Atlanta to move forward with the missional task of loving the world with the gospel.

In practice, all churches have such confessional commitments – some are just not stated in written form. At Grace North Atlanta we believe it is valuable to have a written confession not only for teaching purposes but also to make available for visitors and members to consider. For us, tradition is different than traditionalism. As one person once put it, tradition is ‘the living faith of the dead’ whereas traditionalism is ‘the dead faith of the living.’

Plurality of Leadership & Connected to Others

Finally, because Grace North Atlanta is a theologically-driven church we do not allow just one man to dictate or determine the direction or teaching of the church. We believe the church should have a plurality of leaders called elders (Greek presbuteros). In a church led by elders like Grace, the pastor has no more authority than any other elder. In the Scriptures elders have the responsibility of shepherding and caring for the oversight and direction of the church. The word Presbyterian is clearly pushed to the margin in our conversations at Grace, not because we do not share and teach Presbyterian convictions, but primarily because the word creates many obstacles for those who have not grown up in a Presbyterian tradition. What is important to know is that Grace is not a ‘lone ranger.’ We believe churches in the New Testament were connected to one another and therefore the wisest form of church government is not an independent form but a connectional form such as Grace enjoys with other PCA churches in metro Atlanta and the rest of the PCA denomination. As a PCA church we have an accountability ‘with teeth’ to other PCA churches.