Our Beliefs

Our Vision

Our vision is for Dripping Springs to experience the love of God in Christ. The story of the Bible is that of a holy and loving God who desired to give men and women the gift of being fully known and fully loved by Him. God demonstrated his love toward sinful, broken people by sending his son, Jesus Christ — ensuring that those who respond to Jesus in faith and repentance will be fully and finally adopted into his family. In this same way, Jesus sent his church into the world, commissioning and empowering it to proclaim and manifest the heart of God. To that end, we desire Dripping Springs to know and experience the love of God in Christ.

Our Mission

Our mission is to cultivate communities of Christ-followers. We strive to connect men and women to Jesus Christ and to foster communities in which hearts are increasingly awakened to the profound love of God. We emphasize the gospel’s transformative power by acknowledging our brokenness, fostering vulnerability, and proclaiming the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.

Five Theological Distinctives

  • We are passionate about gospel centrality.

    We believe the gospel is the good news of what God has graciously accomplished for sinners through the sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection of his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, namely, our forgiveness from sin and complete justification before God. This gospel is also the foundation for our confidence in the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom and the consummation of his purpose for all creation in the new heavens and new earth.

    This gospel is centered in Christ, is the foundation for the life of the church, and is our only hope for eternal life. This gospel is not proclaimed if Christ’s penal substitutionary death and bodily resurrection are not central to our message.

    This gospel is not only the means by which people are saved but also the truth and power by which people are sanctified; it is the truth of the gospel that enables us to genuinely and joyfully do what is pleasing to God and to grow in progressive conformity to the image of Christ.

    The salvation offered in this gospel message is received by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone; no ordinance, ritual, work, or any other activity on the part of man is required in order to be saved.

    (Mark 1:1; Luke 24:46-47; John 3:16-18; Romans 1:16-17; 3:21-26, 5:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 2:2; 15:1-4; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6; 9:13; Galatians 1:6-9; Ephesians 1: 7-10; Colossians 1: 19-20; 2 Timothy 1:8-14; 2 Peter 3: 11-13 Jude 3-4; Revelation 21:1-22:21)

  • We enthusiastically embrace the sovereignty of God’s grace in saving sinners.

    We affirm that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, not on the basis of foreseen faith but unconditionally, according to his sovereign good pleasure and will.

    We believe that through the work of the Holy Spirit, God will draw the elect to faith in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, graciously and effectually overcoming their stubborn resistance to the gospel so that they will most assuredly and willingly believe.

    We also believe that these, the elect of God whom he gave to the Son, will persevere in belief and godly behavior and be kept secure in their salvation by grace through faith.

    We believe that God’s sovereignty in this salvation neither diminishes the responsibility of people to believe in Christ nor marginalizes the necessity and power of prayer and evangelism but rather reinforces and establishes them as the ordained means by which God accomplishes his ordained ends.

    (John 1:12-13; 6:37-44; 10:25-30; Acts 13:48; 16:30-31; Romans 3:1-4:25; 8:1-17,31-39; 9:1-23; 10:8-10; Ephesians 1:4-5; 2:8-10; Philippians 2:12-13; Titus 3:3-7; 1 John 1:7,9)

  • We recognize and rest upon the necessity of the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit for all of life and ministry.

    The Holy Spirit is fully God, equal with the Father and Son, whose primary ministry is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. He also convicts unbelievers of their need for Christ and imparts spiritual life through regeneration (the new birth).

    The Spirit permanently indwells, graciously sanctifies, lovingly leads, and empowers all who are brought to faith in Christ so that they might live in obedience to the inerrant Scriptures.

    The model for our reliance upon the Spirit and our experience of his indwelling and empowering presence is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who was filled with the Spirit and entirely dependent upon his power for the performance of miracles, the preaching of the kingdom of God, and all other dimensions of his earthly ministry.

    The Holy Spirit, who indwelt and empowered Christ, indwells and empowers us through spiritual gifts he has bestowed for the work of ministry and the building up of the body of Christ.

    All the gifts of the Holy Spirit at work in the first-century church are available today and are to be earnestly desired and practiced in an orderly and Biblical manner.

    (Matthew 3:11; 12:28; Luke 4:1, 14; 5:17; 10:21; John 1:12-13; 3:1-15, 34; 14:12; 15:26-27; 16:7-15; Acts 2:14-21; 4:29-30; 10:38; Romans 8:9; 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12:7-13; 12:28-31; 14:1-33; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 3:1-5; Ephesians 1:13-14; 5:18)

  • We are deeply committed to the spiritual & moral equality of male & female and to men as responsible servant-leaders in both home and church.

    Both men and women are together created in the divine image and are, therefore, equal before God as persons, possessing the same moral dignity and value and having equal access to God through faith in Christ. Men and women are the recipients of spiritual gifts designed to empower them for ministry in the local church and beyond. Therefore, men and women are encouraged, equipped, and empowered to utilize their gifting in ministry, in service to the body of Christ, and through teaching in ways consistent with the Word of God.

    While husbands and wives are responsible to God for spiritual nurture and vitality in the home, God has given man the primary responsibility to lead his wife and family in accordance with the servant leadership and sacrificial love characterized by Jesus Christ. 

    This principle of male headship should not be confused with, nor give any hint of, domineering control. Rather, it is to be the loving, tender, and nurturing care of a godly man who is himself under the kind and gentle authority of Jesus Christ.

    The elders/pastors of each local church have been granted authority under the headship of Jesus Christ to provide oversight and to teach/preach the Word of God in the corporate assembly to build up the body. The office of elder/pastor is restricted to qualified men.

    (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18; Acts 14:23, 18:24-26, 20:17-36; 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 5:22-33; Colossians 3:18-19; 1 Timothy 2:11-15; 3:1-7, 4:11-16, 5:17; 2 Timothy 4:1-4; Titus 1:5-9, 2:3-5; 1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Peter 5:1-4)

  • We embrace a missionary understanding of the local church and its role as the primary means by which God chooses to establish his kingdom on earth.

    The church has a clear biblical mandate to look beyond its own community to the neighborhood, the nation, and the world as a whole; thus, mission is not an optional program in the church but an essential element in the identity of the church.

    We are called to make Christ known through the gospel and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to bring his lordship to bear on every dimension of life.

    The primary way we fulfill this mission is through the planting of churches that plant churches and the training of their leaders. Our aim is that Jesus Christ would be more fully formed in each person through the ministry of those churches God enables us to plant around the world.

    We also believe we are responsible neither to retreat from our culture nor to conform to it, but with humility, through the Spirit and the truth of the gospel, to engage it boldly as we seek its transformation and submission to the lordship of Christ.

    (Isaiah 52:7; Matthew 10:5-25; 28:18-20; Luke 4:18-19; 24:46-47; Acts 28:31; Romans 10:14-15; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Galatians 2:10; Ephesians 3:10; 4:11-16; 2 Timothy 4:1-5; Hebrews 10:23-25; 1 Peter 2:4-5, 9-10)