Mission Statement
Welcoming and equipping the people of our beloved Winston-Salem to follow Christ, delight in the Spirit’s presence, and glorify God.¹
Vision Statement
We long for Winston-Salem to hear the Good News that Christ sets us free from sin. Our gathered worship aspires to tune our hearts to a lifelong enjoyment of Him through prayer, singing, and feasting on His Word. From this place of renewal, we bear witness to Christ in our homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods—seeking the flourishing of our beloved city.²
Core Values
These values follow a natural movement, each one flowing from the last: from the Gospel that saves us, to the Word and Worship that form us, to the Common Life we share together, and outward to our city and every calling we inhabit.
The Gospel – We celebrate the Gospel of grace—that God saves us apart from our works—and cherish the Reformed tradition’s witness to this truth.
Feasting on God’s Word – Scripture is God’s inspired, inerrant, life-giving word, our nourishment, and the voice that shapes, guides, and guards our theology, worship, study, and daily lives.
Worship as Formation – Through prayer, singing, and the sacraments God forms us—tuning our hearts and training our minds for lifelong enjoyment of God.³
Community Through Christ – True friendship is mediated by Christ⁴ and formed organically by the congregation following Christ together, welcoming neighbors into a life of Small Groups, Bible studies, and prayer.⁵
The Body of Common Life – Our common life belongs to God and us, his children. Like a family, the work, the witness, the friendships, the worship are initiated and sustained by an intergenerational congregation itself.
The Church as Institution – Our greatest contribution is being a healthy church—stable, grounded. We are a community whose guild is the church and whose craft is the Gospel, just as hospitals offer healing and schools provide education.⁶
A Flourishing City – We seek a flourishing Winston-Salem by caring for one another within our congregation and by funding and volunteering with partner organizations who skillfully address the material needs of the vulnerable, seeking justice and mercy for our city. ⁷ \
The Sacredness of Vocation – From our gathered worship, we send each member of Christ’s body out to the arts, commerce, education, homemaking, medicine, law, and more. Faithful work in any calling glorifies God—not merely as a means to witness, but as an end in itself. ⁸
¹ Ephesians 4:11-16, Matthew 28:18-20, Westminster Shorter Catechism #1
² We are particularly focused on being a presence in the "historic neighborhoods around downtown Winston-Salem". By this we mean to describe our geographic heart, not draw boundary lines. Salem Pres exists for the city center and the historic neighborhoods surrounding it — West Salem, West End, Washington Park, Ardmore, and the broader urban core. We welcome all who find their way to us, and we seek to serve our portion of the city well, while also honoring the work of our sister churches throughout Winston-Salem and the Piedmont Triad.
³ “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine
⁴ “We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. What does this mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
⁵ “Worship is the heart of discipleship if and only if worship is a repertoire of Spirit-endued practices that grab hold of your gut, recalibrate your kardia [“heart”, or “gut” acc. Smith], and capture your imagination. Because we are liturgical animals, we need to recognize the rival liturgies that vie for our hearts and then commit ourselves to the rightly ordered liturgy of Christian worship as a recalibration and rehabituation project.”
-James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love
⁶ Influenced by Neo-Calvinism and Christian Humanism. For more see Comment magazine’s Manifesto.
⁷ The local church is its own valuable institution. The contribution of the church through evangelism, worship, discipleship, and congregational friendship is unique. We want to underscore these as our specific tasks (see Galatians 6:10) while supporting our partner organizations. God has uniquely skilled them to do their work in ways the church is less equipped. This is influenced especially by When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.
⁸ "Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God's place, as his representatives. We learn not only that work has dignity in itself, but also that all kinds of work have dignity."
-Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor