Our Story
Pastor Ray Brandon dreamed of planting a church with a simple goal: help people who were unfamiliar with the Bible and church, connect with God without letting structures and programs get in the way. With the help of 35 adults and their families committed to seeing this vision become a reality— Northbridge Church began on October 5, 2005. That first Sunday, over 131 attended the first service at our location in Cooper.
Northbridge has grown and planted a new church, CityGate Church in Portage Michigan. CityGate launched in the fall of 2017.
Our Vision
The year 2025 will be a significant milestone in Northbridge’s life as we celebrate our 20th anniversary. Our history is one marked by passionate believers desiring to see our community changed by the gospel.
Life is a relentless storm of anxiety, distractions, depression, insecurities, and isolation. We are flooded by busyness and seeking ways to stop the erosion. The hope of the gospel offers a secure foundation which can never wash away. At least 70 percent of our community does not have a gospel foundation. We imagine by 2025 that what was once an eroding landscape, will be a rich soil filled with mature trees that provide a gospel-centered ecosystem for flourishing lives.
We picture neighbors and friends who share their lives together, join for weekly meals together, and intentionally speak about how the gospel shapes and changes their lives. We imagine families and homes transformed by parents who are living out the gospel, committed to discipling their children, and seeing them grow in Christ. We envision Northbridgers who find specific ways to tangibly bless our community, grow spiritual successors, and daily saturate the community with gospel conversations.
By 2025 Northbridge will seek to relationally connect and verbally engage the 70 percent to grow to a Church of 700. We will develop disciples who plant and nurture the seeds of the gospel through small groups that cultivate gospel centered relationships in their group and community network. Our members will build genuine friendships in and outside the church that create opportunities to model and teach gospel centered living, producing new believers in Christ. As these believers grow and mature, they will germinate seeds of the gospel in their community network.
Our Mission
Our Mission is to make disciples for Jesus that result in new
followers of Jesus and new churches started
Our Beliefs
NORTHBRIDGE AFFIRMS A CORE CONFESSION OF CONVICTIONS IN COMMON WITH THE CREEDS OF THE EARLY CHURCH, THE CONFESSIONS OF THE REFORMATION AND ALL CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS.
1. We believe that the Bible is the Word of God, truth without error, clear and powerful in its message, sufficient for all of our needs, and the final authority for faith and life.
2. We believe in the triune God --- Father, Son and Holy Spirit --- who is holy, just, loving, good, wise and almighty; who has created all things by his word out of nothing, who sustains, provides for and rules all things, who is our only Redeemer and who will judge all people.
3. We believe that God directly created Adam and Eve as the historical parents of the human race, distinct from the rest of creation, in His image and likeness for fellowship with Himself and to carry out the creation mandates. Their union as man and woman models God's design for marriage and perpetually stands as God's loving and righteous will for all sexual intimacy. Out of this marriage union of man and woman God gives children as a blessing from the Lord. Thus all human life is sacred and worthy of protection from the moment of conception.
4. We believe that our first parents forfeited their original righteousness when they succumbed to Satan's temptation and rebelled against God's revealed will. As a result, every human is born in sin, leaving us totally depraved alienated from God and destined to spiritual and physical death. As such our sinful ways have corrupted God's creation, resulting in discord to society and nature.
5. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who added full humanity to his perfect deity, obeyed God perfectly, died for our sins on the cross, rose again to defeat Satan, returned to heaven to pour out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and to intercede for his people.
6. We believe that the triune God has provided a great salvation for those who repent of their sins and trust Christ and his finished work; that he calls, regenerates, justifies, forgives, adopts, sanctifies, keeps and will glorify them.
7. We believe in the Holy Spirit who has been sent to complete and perfect in us all of the works that Jesus did for us. He convicts of sin, regenerates, sanctifies us, gifts us for ministry and assures us of our salvation.
8. We believe in the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the bodily resurrection and final judgment of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved and the everlasting, conscious punishment of the lost.
WHILE MANY FELLOW CHRISTIANS AFFIRM THE ABOVE TRUTHS, WE AFFIRM THEM FROM WITHIN THE REFORMED AND DISTINCTLY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL TRADITION AS DEVELOPED AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND AS REFLECTED IN THE FOLLOWING BELIEFS.
1. We believe that the Church is a new people of God born at Pentecost, distinct from Israel, and manifest in local congregations of baptized believers who are committed to carrying out the great commission.
2. We believe that Jesus gave two ordinances to the church, baptism of believers by immersion and the Lord's Supper.
3. We believe in the autonomy of the local congregation, the priesthood of all believers and leadership by elected pastors and deacons.
4. We believe in the continued expression of the spiritual gifts. The more demonstrative or "sign gifts" such as healing, raising the dead and speaking in tongues were essentially given for the authentication of the apostolic generation and are not normative for today.
5. We believe that Jesus Christ may return at any moment to deliver his people from the coming wrath, defeat the kingdom of Antichrist, and establish His millennial kingdom.
6. We believe that civil government is of divine appointment and that we are responsible for being good citizens. However, should civil government command us to violate God's Word, we must obey God rather than man.
7. We believe in the reality of Satan and his kingdom of darkness, and that our confrontation with Satan demands belief and trust in God and the practical use of Scripture and other resources God has made available to us.