About Us
Christ Presbyterian Church began in 2005 as a small Bible study made up of people who wanted to see a new Christ-centered church in the Temecula Valley. That original vision is still intact and on display every Sunday. When you worship with us, you are brought face to face with Jesus—his life, his death, his ministry for us today at the right hand of God, and his coming again. We fervently believe that our lives need to be shaped by the message of Jesus, what the Bible calls “the gospel,” because it is only as we are formed and reformed by that good news that we are able to love God and love our neighbor.
At CPC, we describe ourselves using five words:
Historic: Apostolic Faith
We know that we’re part of a body of believers that is older than our own journey of faith. We value and rely on the faithfulness of men and women of generations past who sought to love and follow God in societies and eras very different from our own. We aim to do nothing more than believe the same God, preach the same Bible, and love our neighbors in the same way that Christians have done since the days of the apostles. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. We’re just trying to be faithful.
Protestant: Reformation Heritage
The story of Christianity is, unfortunately, a story of strife and division. We are all sinful and even though we strive to worship the same God and believe the same Bible, error can sometimes sneak into the church as we value traditions over Scripture or accommodation over faithfulness. We believe that by the mid-sixteenth century, the church was being corrupted by false teachings and power plays. In the midst of this strife, several reform movements were started to try to purify the church from the inside out. The most significant of these reform movements centered on the teachings of men like Martin Luther and John Calvin. With them the Protestant Reformation began and we follow their emphasis on the sufficiency of Scripture, the centrality of Christ, the freedom of grace, the foundation of faith, and the focus on God’s glory (the five solas of the Reformation).
Evangelical: Christ-Centered
With other evangelicals in other denominations, we affirm the importance of sharing the good news of Christ’s life, death and resurrection with Christians and non-Christians alike. We all need Jesus to live for us, give us his righteousness, and die in our place for the sins we have committed and continue to comit. Our preaching, therefore, concentrates on the story of Christ as it is found in every verse from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21.
Presbyterian: Connected
We can’t do it on our own, nor should we trust ourselves to be our own ultimate authority. We are in fellowship with other churches in southern California who hold us accountable and encourage us in our ministry. We join with them in confessing a common faith summarized in our creeds, confession, and catechisms.
Church: Unique Purpose
Only the church has the message of salvation. You can find helpful hints and tips for living in many different places, but here you’ll receive the words of life, converse with God, and be fed for your spiritual pilgrimage. The church is God’s outpost, announcing the coming of the king and equipping his subjects to worship, love and serve him in their daily lives.
Core Values
At CPC, we identify our purpose using our five core values:
Gospel Transformation
The gospel changes everything. Real change and growth do not come from our own strength and resources. Instead, real change occurs as we experience transformation in our desires and actions through a deeper grasp of the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because the gospel is the center of everything we do, public worship is central to our Christian lives as we attend to the ordinary means of grace, the preached Word and sacraments, whereby we are reoriented week after week in the work of God in Christ for sinners.
Gospel Community
God has not merely called us into an individual relationship with him but is building up a gospel community, the church. The church is a spiritual family being transformed by the grace of God. We are a people that exist to worship in community, grow in grace with one another in repentance and faith, and build up and support one another in Christ.
Gospel-Shaped Diversity
We are a community that intentionally seeks to be a place of gospel diversity. We seek earnestly to represent the broader community in which God has called us made up of racial and ethnic diversity, socio-political diversity, and generational diversity of all ages. Furthermore, we also seek to be a place of spiritual diversity where the non-believer is welcomed, the newer believer is growing, and the mature believer is flourishing.
Gospel Shepherding
One of the defining aspects of Christ’s church is that it should be a safe place to grow. We desire to be a place where the hurt, broken, and famished can heal and be nourished. Our leadership will be characterized by those who are intentionally seeking to faithfully lead with integrity as under-Shepherds of Christ aware of their own weakness and brokenness as we all seek to depend more and more on Jesus.
The Gospel for Temecula Valley
We desire to be a church that is engaged globally with missions and also locally for the Temecula Valley. The church is not just a safe haven from the surrounding culture. We actively strive to be a presence in our community, equipped for actively sharing the Gospel and equipping our members to establish relationships with friends and neighbors, and seeking the good of our neighbors through justice and mercy.