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About

Our Staff

Rev. Adam Whitescarver

Pastor

Leila Visser

Administration and Sexton

Micah and Jessamyn Rains

Worship Leaders

What We Believe

A note on our beliefs: no one has to believe what we believe in order to attend our church. We have had everyone from Buddhists to atheists to self-described “spiritual people” in attendance, and we were glad to have them all!  We are very mindful of and excited about attenders who are inquiring about the Christian faith and wish to learn more, ask great questions, and have mutually respectful dialogue with us.

Still, we feel we should be forthcoming and honest with what our church members believe.  Cumberland Presbyterians have their own Confession of Faith if you would like to read it, but if you want the short version, this is what we believe to be really important to following and knowing God.

  1. We believe the words of the Bible, in their original languages, are the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God.
  2. We believe there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  3. Men and women were created in God’s image. That image has been disfigured by our sins and brokenness, but through His life, death, and resurrection Jesus has renewed all who put their trust in Him and now works in us by grace through faith to restore the image of Christlikeness in us.
  4. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal future return in power and glory.
  5. We believe Christians are saved by grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live a godly and fruitful life.
  6. We believe salvation is found only in Jesus Christ, and desire this for others. We affirm Heaven and Hell as literal, eternal places, and that people will one day be raised to life to face God’s eternal judgment.  This does not mean we know who is going to Heaven or Hell, and we trust God’s general disposition and actions to be both good and incredibly merciful even in His justice.
  7. The Church is an essential component to our salvation. Since it is the Body of Christ, to belong to Christ is to belong to His Body, but to be truly and deliberately separate from it is to be separate from Jesus and therefore God.  Further, we believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, and work and pray for our visible unity so the world may know Christ is sent of the Father.  As part of their life in the Church believers are to participate in the sacraments instituted by Christ: baptism and communion.
  8. We believe humankind was created in the Image of God as male and female. God’s created order for human sexuality is expressed through either celibacy or in marriage between one man and one woman.  From conception to death all human life is sacred.
  9. The Church is to be “missional.” We are called to reach out beyond ourselves, and to go make disciples of all nations as Christ has commanded.
  10. Prayer is an essential practice without which the Church’s work to disciple all nations is impossible to complete because some forms of spiritual warfare require it.

We also believe the Apostles’ Creed, which is basically a summary of the Gospel story.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.  Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended to the dead.  On the third day, he rose again.  He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father from where he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic* Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Amen.

*The term “catholic” is not the same as “Roman Catholic.”  It merely refers to the church as a whole, both globally and throughout time and in Heaven, who belong to Jesus Christ.

Red Bank Cumberland Presbyterian Church History

We believe where we come from and who has gone before us gives us a sense of rootedness in our community that speaks to who we will be and what we will leave behind for others.  As Red Bank’s oldest congregation (started officially in 1878 with initial meetings going back to 1846), Red Bank Cumberland Presbyterian used to gather in a one room school house (built 1870) shared by the Baptists and Methodists.

At the time, a common denominator for each of these denominations was their commitment to spread the Gospel and to work with other believers to get the job done.  Their doctrines and systems of church government differed then as they do now, but they remembered, as should we, that cooperation for the sake of the Gospel supersedes the minor points (not the major ones) of doctrine and government. To this end, these churches worked with the local schools, served the poor, and held several revival meetings between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that greatly increased the number of church members.

After over 50 years of sharing a building together, the churches had outgrown the original building, and the Methodists and Baptists built their own churches and moved down the street to present day Dayton Blvd in 1923 and 1925 respectively with the Cumberlands remaining on the hill.

On February 10, 1945, shortly before the end of WWII, the original church burned down—the only remaining artifact is the church bell located by the main entrance.  The congregation wasted no time in constructing the new and current facility which opened on September 1, 1946.

So in continuity with the spirit of what previous generations laid the groundwork for, Red Bank Cumberland Presbyterian Church remains committed to valuing our regional schools, ministering to the poor, and working in collaboration with other churches in our area for the proclaiming the Gospel message, and we pray God gives us grace to persist in all these good works until He comes again.