Proverbs 29:18
We do not pretend to have some kind of direct revelation from God. Anyway we believe that God Himself through His Written Word and His Spirit has put this vision in our hearts.
Our most general purpose is the advancement of the Kingdom of God.
Our view is set upon three directions:
Our vision for EPC Dolno Ezerovo is it to be place where the local people can know God, worship Him, and serve Him.
This is eternal life. We want everyone in Dolno Ezerovo to have the possibility to know God. That is why we are committed to reach them through our personal witness and with the Good News of Christ’s gospel. We believe that through hearing of the living Word of God the Holy Spirit will start His action in their hearts - working which will result in their regeneration from high.
When we are born again our spirits become alive and we can have a direct communication with God. This communication is realized through the Bible and through the voice of the Holy Spirit. It make it possible for us to know God better and better, and to become more and more close to Him.
God is absolutely perfect. He never sins. Absolutely separated from all His creatures He is Holy. God is a good God. Something more - He is the best. He is light. But He also is love. He loves us with all of His heart. He is merciful and faithful. He is worthy for glorification.
Because He is what He is we worship Him.
We praise God mainly because of two reasons. First, we praise God because He is our Creator. He is the one who gives us life. He is who gives us rains, the fruits of the earth, our water, food, air, and Sunlight. All the blessings in our life come from Him.
Second, we praise God because He is our Savior. Through the sin of the first family we were delivered us slaves to the Sin. Then the Law of God showed us that no one could save himself through his own actions and abilities. But the Lord God so loved us that He gave His own Son to become our Substitute. He suffered the punishment that we deserved instead of us. So through His sacrifice on Calvary and because of His resurrection from the death we were justified, forgiven, and adopted as children of God.
Jesus’ resurrection show that His sacrifice was received as completely sufficient. The value of His blood was enough to cover all our sins and transgressions which Jesus took upon Himself. So there was no reason why He should continue to be in captivity of the Death. Neither do we! That is why we are so sure in our future resurrection. Through His beloved Son Jesus Christ, God saved us from the powers of the Sin, the World, the Devil, the Flesh and the Law.
We praise God because He is our Creator and our Savior. But there is also something more. We praise God because we love Him. Through our worship we want to come near to our Heavenly Father and have communion and fellowship with Him. Our desire is that through this contact we have with God the Holy Spirit could transform us into the image of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have also realized that the greatest act of worship is not just singing, thanksgiving or praising God but doing His will - the obedience to the commands He has given us in His Word and the listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Our understanding is that God not only wants us to come in knowledge of Him and to worship Him. His will is also we to serve Him.
God has ministries for every one of His children. He has given some of them special functions to help the new members of the body of Christ to find out what their ministry is and to fulfill it.
Every Christian has a general ministry and specific ministry. The common ministry of all of us is to be "light to the world" and "salt of the earth". We all are "ambassadors of God" bringing to all the people the His message of reconciliation. But every one of us has also his specific ministry. And we need the cooperation of the other Christians in the local body of Christ in order to do it.
We have committed ourselves to serve God with the gifts and the grace He so generously poured down upon us. And to help every member of our congregation to discover the gifts and the ministries God has given him, so that he can include himself in the common service of the local church.
We insist that the most important quality for every ministry is the faithfulness of the servant. So, our desire is to be faithful in the small things and in the ministry in which God has put us.
Our ministry includes the conversion of the sinners, the restoration of the apostates and the inner sanctification of the believers. For this we work - to bring every man to maturity in Christ.
We want EPC Dolno Ezerovo to be a New Testament church. For us this means that it should be Christ-centered, Bible-based, and Spirit-filled.
Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. He is its Master Builder, Cornerstone, and Bridegroom. So we want to give Him His right place and position in our local church too. Jesus is the central figure in God’s plan for our salvation. Through His blood we were redeemed. He gives us eternal life. So we want to exalt Him as the only Savior and the only way to God. We want to submit ourselves under His authority and obey His commandments.
Jesus Christ rose from the death. He gave us the hope for our resurrection also. He promised to come back and to take us where is He. So, we expect His Second Coming.
Just now Jesus Christ is our heavenly High priest and Intercessor. Through Him we can come boldly before God’s throne of grace.
Jesus Christ is the center of the church and the source of its life. So we teach all our members to be united with Him personally, and not just with the church. His life flowing through each member makes our church not just an organization but a living organism.
We have accepted the Spirit-inspired books of the Bible as our guide for faith and conduct. We recognize the Holy Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament as the only authoritative Word of God. We accept all teachings that are in agreement with them and reject any that are not.
We believe that God Himself speaks to us through the Bible. That is why we have committed ourselves to preach the Word.
We do not want any man to be in the foundation of our church; neither we will allow it to be based upon any human’s or demon’s teachings or philosophies.
A church, which is based upon the Bible, can not fall.
We are conscious of the fact that we can not serve the Lord or live a godly life with our own abilities or strength. Just before Jesus went back to heaven He told His followers that they must wait in Jerusalem until they receive the power of the Holy Spirit before they start to fulfill His Great commission of worldwide evangelism.
In Acts chapter 2 the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the church.
In his epistles Apostle Paul told us that the church is a "temple of the Holy Spirit". So, we want our services to be filled with His Presence. We expect the manifestations of His Gifts and depend upon His guidance in our life and work. We confess that we need His power in order to be effective witnesses for Christ.
We can not pray according God’s will without the help of the Holy Spirit. We can not properly understand the Holy Scripture without His enlightenment. Without the Holy Spirit we would be like orphans. But thank God He has given us His Holy Spirit. That is why we want our church to be Spirit-filled.
We think that in order to be qualified as mature one church should be self-governing, self-growing, and self-supporting.
We see in the New Testament that such were the churches which Apostle Paul left after himself in his missionary journeys. So this also is our purpose for Dolno Ezerovo Evangelical Church.
Our vision is that our church should be governed by men who will be raised up by the Holy Spirit from among the converts in the locality and not from outside.
Our church is national Bulgarian church. It have been founded and established by Bulgarians. All its pastors have been nationals. So we want to preserve and develop this tradition.
Our desire is the Bulgarian people to consider our church as something normal and inherent to the environment and not as foreign or alien to our culture. This last thing is very difficult because the traditional religion in our country is the Orthodox Church, which have more than a thousand years of history in our lands and is part of Bulgarian self-consciousness.
For us this means that our church should have sufficient vitality within itself so that it could grow by the efforts of its own members and does not depend for its numerical growth to missionaries or Christians from other churches.
We believe that it is God’s plan that every Christian should be involved in the process of growth and reproduction of the church. We think that the key to the church growth considering current spiritual situation in Bulgaria is personal witness. That is why we encourage all our members and new converts to be soul-winners. We want all Christians in our church to be engaged with witness for God.
We have adopted the Great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ as our strategy for fulfilling this part of our vision. Our goal is not just to have converts, but to make true Christ’s disciples.
We want to have financial independence. Our understanding is that our church should meet all its needs by itself without external funds. We accept the tithing as a scriptural basis for the support of our church. We do not receive the tithe as a law, but as a spiritual principle which we see in the Bible. We evaluate the conviction of our people in the truth of Christianity by their desire to give for the advancement of the Kingdom of God and their willingness to sacrifice for Christ’s cause.