About Us

The Quad Cities Baptist Association is an organization that exists to facilitate cooperation between churches of like faith and order in our region. This name is specifically chosen as a representation of who we are and what we do.

Quad Cities

We are an association of churches within the Quad Cities region, specifically the Lewis-Clark Valley and Moscow-Pullman metro areas, including numerous small towns and even unincorporated rural areas. While our partner churches readily and joyfully partner with churches outside of our area, formal partnership with this association is reserved for those within the relative geographical boundaries of the Quad Cities region of North-Central Idaho and Southeastern Washington.

Baptist

While the churches within our association are free to accept or reject any individual and particular standard or doctrine (nor does our partnership require adherence to a specific doctrinal statement or statement of faith), we are distinctly baptistic in our positions and opinions. That means that we strongly affirm that only professing believers (that is, those who have professed faith in Christ) are the proper candidates for baptism ("credobaptism" as opposed to "paedobaptism" or "baptismal regeneration"). We also affirm the following doctrines: Biblical Authority, Autonomy of Local Churches, Priesthood of All Believers, Two Offices (Elder and Deacon), Individual Liberty,  Saved Chruch Membership, Two Ordinances, and Separation of Church and State. We uphold the Chicago Statement as a clear elaboration of our position on biblical authority and inerrancy. For us, all doctrines, creeds, confessions, and opinions are allowed only so far as the scriptures allow. A good overview of what Baptists have historically believed is the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833).

With regard to controversial issues, we hold to a complementarian viewpoint (male-only elders)  along with a biblically informed framework for human sexuality and gender; those positions are well defined in the Danvers and Nashville statements, respectively.  Further, we agree that the best and most biblically faithful framework for church polity is elder-led congregationalism.  We hold to a premillennial understanding of eschatological events and joyfully await Christ's return.

The best way to define the common culture of our association is to share this page explaining some Marks of a Healthy Church. While we welcome the participation of our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of their doctrinal commitments, at our events, we limit formal partnership within this association to those churches that are distinctly baptistic and hold to the positions and doctrinal commitments defined above. 

Association

As mentioned above, we strongly affirm that all churches are autonomous, operating solely under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Churches within this association, both as formal partners and informal participants, do so without any control from other churches or from this association. This means that we have a great amount of diversity within our association on issues we haven't specified, but also hold to clearly-defined areas of partnership and agreement. If you'd like to partner with this association, please reach out to us to be reviewed by our board, which is made up of representatives from partner churches.