Ministries

Worship & Music

Music is powerful. Music teaches. Instrumental music stirs the emotions. Lyrics simultaneously impact the intellect. Music fosters repetition: people repeat concepts and images continually in their mind when words are set to attractive melody.

God’s people must be selective when exposing their minds to music. Music for biblical worship elicits spiritual affections such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Unbiblical music elicits fleshly emotions like immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, dispute, dissension, faction, envy, intoxication, carousing and blasphemy.

Biblical music contains words from Scripture, statements of biblical truth and expressions of godly emotion and affection. Music that is angry and sensual with words that do not focus the heart and mind on God is displeasing to God.

Biblical worship music utilizes a variety of instruments, forms and genres. Rocklin Bible Church sings hymns and contemporary songs and uses Classical, Contemporary, Folk, Instrumental, Choral, Jazz and Mixed styles for biblical worship. Rocklin Bible Church uses a variety of vocal ensembles, solos, a contemporary band and a bell choir for worship.

Baptism

Baptism, with Communion, is one of two official ‘ceremonies’ or ordinances. Baptism accompanies salvation. Genuine salvation, and therefore genuine baptism, occurs only once in a person’s life. If one receives baptism and is not saved, that person is under God’s wrath during the ceremony. Neither the water nor the ceremony saves, and that baptism means nothing. If that person is later saved, he must receive baptism.

A new believer’s saving faith makes a baptism legitimate. A believer who totally believes and trusts that Christ died to eradicate the penalty of his sins and has given him a new, sin-hating, God-adoring, obedience-loving nature by the indwelling of The Person of the Holy Spirit must receive baptism as soon as possible.

Baptism involves a clear testimony and total immersion in water. A personal account testifies to how Christ has irrevocably changed one’s life. Total immersion pictures how Christ has forever disposed of one’s old way of thinking, willing, desiring and acting and replaced them with God-honoring ones. Total immersion may occur in a lake, stream or in a baptistery. A willingness to receive baptism accompanies salvation. A person who refuses or has a desire to delay baptism may not be a Christian.

Communion

Communion, with Baptism, is one of two official ‘ceremonies’ or ordinances. Communion occurs often and celebrates the eternal relationship with God that flows from salvation. Communion means properly dealing with sin.

Communion participation may be legitimate or illegitimate. Legitimate participation is when a believer has totally trusted in Christ for salvation, and has dealt with all personal sins by confessing them to God and making all possible reparation to injured parties, and has freely forgiven all who have sinned against him whether or not they have confessed and made reparation back. A person partakes illegitimately when Christ has not saved him, or when he has not confessed or made reparation for his sin or has not forgiven others who have sinned against him. A person who partakes illegitimately professes to be but is not in intimate relationship with God, although he may be saved. Such participation may bring on God’s discipline.

Communion involves eating a portion of unleavened bread and drinking a small sip of wine (or grape juice) with other believers. The bread and the wine represent Christ’s body and blood. Eating the bread communicates that Christ has died to remove the penalty of the person’s sins. Drinking a small sip of wine pictures that Christ now lives in the person, and that the person is in the most intimate fellowship with God and other believers, having dealt properly with personal sin and others who have sinned against him.

Evangelism

Rocklin Bible Church commits to sharing Christ in three primary spheres. First, is in personal relationships. The LORD Jesus has placed attenders of Rocklin Bible Church in personal relationships locally and around the world through family and various involvements. Those of Rocklin Bible Church desire to bring these people to Christ through sharing the Bible and through the example of their personal behavior.

Rocklin Bible Church also shares Christ in the local community. The LORD Jesus graciously provided ownership of the facility at 4300 Racetrack Road so that Rocklin Bible Church can personally share Christ with neighbors and acquaintances through conversations, worship, community service and local events.

Rocklin Bible Church also shares Christ in international missions. Rocklin Bible Church supports missionaries on every continent so that the nations of the world, many of which are unfamiliar with Christianity and the Bible, may come to know Christ as personal LORD and Savior.

Biblical Counseling

Biblical Counselors are not separate from church pastors. Biblical counseling is not different from pastoring. Biblical counseling is part of what a pastor does. In fact, every Christian to some extent functions as a biblical counselor.

The goal of biblical counseling is to help a Christian become more like Christ. Christlikeness happens when God the Holy Spirit transforms the thoughts, motivations and desires of a Christian so that he thinks and behaves according to biblical truth. Ultimately, the only instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to transform the inner thought life of a Christian is the Bible. The Holy Spirit can use any Christian who rightly presents the Bible to make a change in another Christian (“iron sharpens iron” Proverbs 27:17).

Pastors counsel biblically, and so should every member of the congregation. Currently, there are more excellent and affordable Christian counseling books, CD’s, videos and training materials to help a Christian become competent to counsel than ever before.

You can start here to familiarize yourself with effective biblical counseling materials from such excellent authors as Jay Adams, Ted and Paul David Tripp, Wayne Mack, Stuart Scott, Martha Peace and others.

Bible Training

Every Christian needs to change. Every Christian needs to grow. A Christian does not enter the Church as a finished product. Every Christian needs training. Consider the following verses:

“Be diligent to present yourselves approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the Word of Truth” 2 Timothy 2:15

“Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” Hebrews 5:14

It is the responsibility of the Church to train its members. Church training has four basic parts:

• The biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and studying the rules of textual interpretation (Hermeneutics) help Christians go deeper into the text. They help Christians achieve greater depth and precision of knowledge.

• Systematic Theology and Old and New Testament study provide depth but also help Christians see and understand the big picture. They help believers achieve breadth of knowledge.

• Apologetics helps Christians defend the Bible against secular psychology, humanism, philosophy, heresy, atheistic science, man-made religion, cults, mythology, superstition, secularism, Post-modern thinking, the occult and other spiritual enemies.

• Biblical Counseling helps Christians apply biblical truth to their thinking so that biblical thoughts and motivations replace unbiblical ones. As a Christian transforms his mind, holy conduct results.

Sunday School

In Sunday School children first learn the concept of authority:

God’s authority is explicit in the Bible. Parents, the Church and government also serve God with their authority. Children must respect (not blindly follow) authority or disobey God and fail in life.

Children then learn the privilege of responsibility:

Children learn the privilege and responsibility to love, worship and serve God; to honor and obey parents; to submit and cooperate in the Church; to be law abiding citizens and to benefit their fellow men. Those who default on these responsibilities forfeit wonderful privileges.

Children also learn to apply themselves to personal development:

Children grow in the spiritual disciplines of Bible Study; the intellectual disciplines of reading, writing, thinking logically and critically and communicating effectively and clearly; the emotional and character disciplines of finding joy in God , humility, self-control, diligence, service and teamwork and the physical disciplines of bodily development and bodily care.

Rocklin Bible Church Sunday School teachers are gifted, dedicated couples who receive specialized training. No novices or temporary workers teach our children.

Nursery

Small children, even infants, are avid learners:

True, they cannot assimilate information like older children and cannot express well what they know, but they learn voraciously from the time they exit the womb. Scripture even documents the case of one child who knew Christ in the womb (Luke 1:44)!

The glory of God:

Everything in the universe displays the attributes of God (Psalm 19:1). Everything in the universe teaches creatures something about their Creator. However, teaching must suited to one’s level of comprehension.

The Church can teach even the youngest children something about God:

Rocklin Bible Church offers a nursery, particularly for children under the age of 1. Starting at age 1, there is a Sunday morning group ministry for one hour, from 9-10am. This ministry includes worship, prayer, a short teaching time from the Bible (5 minutes) and a memory verse (5 minutes), play and cleanup. From the earliest years, children can develop habits of ordering their thoughts and actions according to the truths of God.