About Us

We want to welcome you to a unique Lutheran church here in Bismarck. Many words have been used to describe Grace Lutheran. Words like friendly, caring, Bible believing, non-traditional, informal, musical, and alive. While Grace Lutheran is all of these, we believe there are two characteristics which stand out. First, Grace Lutheran is a church where the Bible is held to be the inspired word of God, totally without error, and the final and authoritative guide for faith and life. Second, Grace Lutheran is a church where people love to linger in fellowship with God and with one another.

If you need a friendly church and a church where the Bible remains God’s inspired word, then come visit us! We would love to meet you!

our beliefs

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Our Beliefs

The Bible

The Bible, including both Old and New Testaments as originally given, is the verbally and plenarily inspired Word of God and is free from error in the whole and in the part, and is therefore the final authoritative guide for faith and conduct.

God

There is one God eternally existent in three distinct persons in one divine essence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God the Father has revealed Himself as the Creator and preserver of the universe, to Whom the entire creation and all creatures are subject.

Human Beings

God created Adam and Eve in His image to live in fellowship with Him. They fell into sin through the temptation of Satan and thereby lost fellowship with God. Through their disobedience the entire human race became totally depraved, that is, self-centered sinners who oppose God, and who by nature are unable to trust, fear or love Him. They are subject to the devil, and are condemned to death under the eternal wrath of God.

Jesus

Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, is the image of the invisible God. To accomplish our redemption, He became fully human, being conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man, by His perfect obedience and substitutionary death on the cross, has purchased our redemption. He arose from the dead for our justification in the body in which He was crucified. He ascended into heaven, where He is now seated at the right hand of God, the Father, as our interceding High Priest. He will come a second time personally, bodily, and visibly to gather the believers unto Himself and to establish His millennial kingdom. He will judge the living and the dead and make an eternal separation between believers and unbelievers. His kingdom shall have no end.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is a divine person eternally one with the Father and with the Son. Through the Word of God He convicts people of sin, persuades them to confess their sinfulness to God and calls them to faith through the Gospel. He regenerates, sanctifies, and preserves believers in the one true faith. He comforts, guides, equips, directs, and empowers the church to fulfill the great commission.

Salvation

The knowledge and benefit of Christ’s redemption from sin is brought to the human race through the means of grace, namely the Word and the sacraments.

Through the Word of the Law God brings sinners to know their lost condition and to repent. Through the Word of the Gospel He brings sinners to believe in Jesus Christ, have the forgiveness of sin, become righteous in God’s sight, and have eternal life. This occurs as the Holy Spirit awakens them to see their sin and invites and enables them to accept God’s grace in Christ. Such individuals will then experience the power of the Gospel to live as children of God.

In the Sacrament of Baptism, God offers the benefits of Christ’s redemption to all people and graciously bestows the washing of regeneration and newness of life to all who believe. God calls the baptized person to live in daily repentance, that is, in sorrow for sin, in turning from sin, and in personal faith in the forgiveness of sin obtained by Christ. By grace we are daily given the power to overcome sinful desires and live a new life in Christ. Those who do not continue to live in God’s grace need to be brought again to repentance and faith through the Law and Gospel.

Because the sinfulness of human nature passes on from generation to generation and the promise of God’s grace includes little children, we baptize infants, who become members of Christ’s believing church through baptism. These children need to come to know that they are sinners with a sinful nature that opposes God. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, they need to confess their sinfulness and yield to God; and possess for themselves forgiveness of their sin through Jesus Christ, as they are led from the faith received in infant baptism into a clear conscious personal faith in Christ as their Lord and Savior and being assured of salvation, rely solely on the finished work of Christ, and the power of the Gospel to live as children of God.

In the Sacrament of Holy Communion, Christ gives to the communicants His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine. He declares the forgiveness of sin to all believers, and strengthens their faith.

The Church Universal

The Church Universal consists of all those who truly believe on Jesus Christ as Savior. The local congregation is an assembly of believers in a certain locality among whom the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are rightly administered. The confessing membership of the local congregation shall include only those who have been baptized into "the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," confess personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, maintain a good reputation in the community and accept the constitution of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren. It cannot, however, be avoided that hypocrites might be mixed in the congregation; that is, those whose unbelief is not evident to the congregation.

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren practices the congregational form of church government and the autonomy of the local congregations. The office of pastor and elder is to be filled by men only. The synodical administration has an advisory function as it relates to the congregation, and an administrative function as it relates to the cooperative efforts of the congregations.

The Lutheran Confession

The Lutheran confessions are a summary of Bible doctrines. We adhere to the following confessional writings: The Apostolic Creed, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, unaltered Augsburg Confession, and Luther’s Small Catechism.

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Our Beliefs

Our Denomination

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America (CLBA) is a family of 123 congregations in the United States and Canada, with 1,500 daughter congregations in Cameroon, Chad, Japan and Taiwan now organized into four national churches. The CLBA congregations are Lutheran in theological tradition and evangelical in practice.

The CLBA as a denomination exists to serve congregations in their obedience to the Great Commission, locally, nationally and internationally. This commission call us to proclaim Christ, causing people to trust and follow Him

For the first 50 years of CLBA history over 50% of denominational funds were spent on overseas missions, living out the vision that was in the founders hearts. Today the people of the CLBA are experiencing a growing desire to reach out to our communities and to plant more congregations in North America. Our vision is to found congregations that are aligned to the Scriptures as authoritative, and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as central.

We believe this is God’s primary way of bringing truth and meaning to a broken world. Congregations with living ministries of worship, nurture, evangelism, caring and loving fellowship that are well led are the hope for light and life in our communities and in our world. The prayer of our congregations is that the Lord will use us who have received grace through faith, to be centers for spiritual life

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