Welcome to Crossview
Thanks for stopping by to check us out! We hope you'll get a glimpse of who we are (followers of Jesus Christ) and what we are passionate about (growing in our faith and serving those around us).
Crossview Covenant Church is a community of disciples of Jesus Christ located in North Mankato, MN. As a body of believers, we focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ, our love for one another, and the Word of God. We invite you to join us as we worship God together, connect in smaller community, use our talents and gifts to serve, and give generously.
Our Vision
Connecting people to Jesus so they can connect Jesus to their world!
Covenant Affirmations
Our church is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America denomination. Appreciating this classical Christian heritage and hungering for a vital experience of new life in Christ, we affirm a number of evangelical affirmations. Among these are:
The Old and New Testaments are the authoritative Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct. We believe it is essential to the life of the Church that it be a company of people who want, above all else, that their lives be shaped by the powerful and living Word of God. The alternative is clear. Not to be shaped by the Word is to be shaped by the world.
The necessity of the new birth for entrance into God's kingdom, and the importance of continuing growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ for sound spiritual health. Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again." John 3:3 TNIV. He also said, "If you hold to my teachings you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" John 8:31 -32 TNIV.
We have always been involved in missions both home and abroad. We understand that to involve evangelism, Christian formation as well as benevolent ministries of compassion and justice. We seek to follow the great commission (go and make disciples) and the great commandment (love your neighbor as yourself).
Characterized by mutual participation in and sharing of the new life in Christ. Membership is by confession of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. It is open to all believers. Considerations of class or race, education or pedigree, wealth or prestige do not enter. Uniformity in creedal details is not expected. What is required is that one have "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3 TNIV). "The doors of the church are wide enough to admit all who believe and narrow enough to exclude those who do not," said our forebears. We affirm no less today.
Who with the Father and the Son calls the Church into being, empowers its witness, guides its mission, and supplies the gifts needed by the Church and its members to exalt Christ.
Who delivers us from the power of sin and moves us by his grace into a whole new experience of obedience and life. This freedom creates an ecclesiastical climate which allows for differences of opinion in matters of interpretation, doctrine, and practice within the context of biblical guidelines and historical Christianity. Such freedom "is to be distinguished from the individualism that disregards the centrality of the Word of God and the mutual responsibilities and disciplines of the spiritual community"
SUMMARY
Affirmations like these are not to be taken as creedal statements. They are rather to be understood as true and valid descriptions of what we believe and cherish as we continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of God, awaiting that day when "the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 11:15, TNIV).
CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS
The Covenant has its roots in historical Christianity as it emerged in the Protestant Reformation, in the biblical instruction of the Lutheran Church of Sweden, and in the great spiritual awakenings of the nineteenth century.
Apostolic: We are an apostolic church. We confess the historic faith of the apostles. We believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, our Savior and Lord. We accept the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, as "the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct."
Christian: We are a Christian Church. We see ourselves to be part of the universal church of Jesus Christ from the days of the apostles until now. We are a Reformation church. We stand in the mainstream of the sixteenth-century Protestant movement which insisted on justification by grace alone through faith alone.
Evangelical: We are an evangelical church. We were born out of the revival movement that touched all of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and came to flower for us in nineteenth- and twentieth-century North America.