Basic principles

All buildings must have a solid foundation, and ours is the written Word of God. Before we became a community, our members were part of a local church, and the foundation of that was the Word of God. One of our founding principles was to obey the Bible, not just read it. Through prayer and discussion, the men who came together as our pioneering believers gained an understanding of God’s Will for our church. They did not rely on just one or two scriptures on a topic, but searched the scriptures for everything that God revealed plainly in writing. We also avoided using Bible commentaries and books written by so-called experts who set themselves up to explain the Bible. When our men were in unity and convinced that they had God’s will, they acted on it.

From time to time there were no clear Bible passages to guide us through an issue of the modern age, so then we looked at Biblical principles. We asked, “What would Jesus do in circumstances like this?” Through the leading of the Holy Spirit, we always found answers. We had a strong distrust of revelations and visions, as we had seen that people often followed these in disobedience to God’s direct word. In all things, we came back to the Bible looking for answers – and we found them. Eventually, the principles we studied led us to a community life based upon the features of the first Church in Jerusalem.

If you want to understand why we live as we do, consider the group of people at the left. These hundreds of men, women and children would not exist if not for the faith of the Gloriavale Christian Community. They were all born outside of the average statistics for families in New Zealand, where most families have only two children. If the parents and grandparents of these children had practised birth control, their generations would have been destroyed with contraception and flushed down the toilet, or aborted. Instead, these people have a life to live. They are all wanted, cherished and loved by parents with a faith that says, “We will trust God for all the children he wants to give us.”

After many years of enjoying the blessings of Community, we ask: What alternative is there? How else can we keep the principles so plainly shown in the New Testament? At a time when the whole world is becoming more ungodly, we believe that God has shown us a way of keeping the faith. Here are a few of the basic principles we live by: