FAQS
Who We Are - What We Believe
First Things First...
Who's Behind His Church Online?
Gerald Hutchman Jr (Hutch) was ordained to the Work of the Gospel Ministry in 2003 by the Pastor and elders of Crossover Church in Mead Washington. He served as a bi-vocational Pastor of Salmo Baptist Church in Salmo, British Columbia from January 2003 until December of 2018.
In December of 2018, Hutch and his wife Donna relocated to Lebanon, Oregon to spend their remaining years closer to family and continue to serve the Lord and the local church.
Donna grew up in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. She worked at Hewlett Packard for 10 years, first in R&D and then as Emergency Program Coordinator. During those years, her days off and many evenings were spent as a volunteer
Firefighter EMT.
Donna left Oregon in 2004 to serve alongside Hutch in small church ministry in British Columbia. She developed a much-needed women’s ministry program and served as its coordinator for 14 years. In 2009 she joined the team of an organization that supports women in ministry. She is still serving on that team.
How are we supported?
During his years of small church ministry in Canada, Hutch founded One Source Web Development and has spent that past 20 years developing online portals for small business in many different industries.
What do we believe?
We believe God is both real and personal (not an impersonal force). There is only one God, the Maker, Preserver, and Ruler of all things. He is all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good. Because of God, life has meaning and purpose.
We believe the Holy Spirit is God, the third Person of the Trinity. He is alive and active. He indwells followers of Christ, working in unison with the Word of God to guide them in all truth. He is the power that enables Christians to live as new creations in Christ and empowers believers for service.
We believe every human is created in the image of God. No matter how messed up we are, there is something good, true, and beautiful and, therefore, valuable about everyone. Thus, everyone deserves our dignity, honor, love, and respect, not because of who they are or what they do, but by sheer virtue of being human.
We believe restoration between God and people (also called ‘salvation’) happens when the Holy Spirit gives people a new heart, leading and enabling them to trust in Jesus alone for salvation. Because God loves his creation, he will also restore the entire universe to a condition of beauty, rest, joy, perfection, and freedom. God’s world, which began as a promising Garden, will find its fulfillment in a perfected, life-giving City in which there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain.
We believe the Church is the heart of Christian community. The Church doesn’t save, but functions as our adoptive spiritual family and the primary and essential means by which we experience his grace through relationship. God wants all members of his worldwide Church to be active in a local church which meets regularly to worship God, serve each other, and be a life-giving presence in their local community and world.
Jesus said, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5.
We believe the only way possible to live the Christian life is by God’s power within us. So we seek to practice a daily dependence on God’s Spirit to enable us to do what is right.
We believe good works do not and cannot make us acceptable to God, but are the natural outcome of authentic faith in Jesus. We become more fully human—the very best and most healthy version of ourselves—to the degree that we follow God’s loving commands. His commands, properly understood, are neither limiting nor oppressive but life-giving and, as such, are an essential prerequisite for true human flourishing.
We believe God was and is encountered in Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully human. He is the sole Mediator able to restore the broken relationship, and the resulting alienation, between God and people. As humanity’s Champion, he faced evil in its fullest form for us on the cross. By letting it crush him, he broke its power. Now, through his resurrection he brings a living hope that one day evil will be vanquished completely.
We believe God spoke and is speaking, that God communicated consistently to his people throughout history, and that this communication is recorded without error in the literature we call the Bible. It contains everything we need to know about having a right relationship with God and our fellow human beings.
We believe that in their quest for independence and the centrality of self, all people begin their lives alienated from God, and in this condition are without hope and under judgment, a condition that can only be cured through God’s loving, gracious, and saving intervention. Because we are depraved creatures, shame, loneliness, addiction, evil, and every kind of pain begins in the heart and creeps outward. Since we are made in the image of God, we are most alive when our trust, affections and allegiances are re-centered on him.
We believe in the reality and power of grace. Though we are worse than we could possibly fathom, because of Jesus Christ, we are more loved than we could ever wrap our minds around. We call this the gospel (Good News).
WE BELIEVE baptism is an outward and public proclamation of a decision made to follow Jesus Christ s Lord and Savior. Baptism does not provide salvation but is a beautiful picture of the burial and resurrection of our Lord. “buried with Him in baptism” Colossians 2:12. We practice baptism by immersion under water. This is the way Jesus was baptized, and the way the Bible commands.
We believe the Church is the heart of Christian community. The Church doesn’t save, but functions as our adoptive spiritual family and the primary and essential means by which we experience his grace through relationship. We encourage all members of our local community at Salmo Baptist Church to “Practice the Presence of God”.
We Believe God wants all members of his worldwide Church to be active in a local church which meets regularly to worship God, serve each other, and be a life-giving presence in their local community and world.