Who Are We?
The Association of Ministers for Baptist and Evangelical Renewal (AMBER) is an independent association of likeminded pastors and churches across Western Canada who have covenanted together to work for renewal in our lives as ministers and in our churches. We are distinctively Baptist, rooted in a rich confessional heritage, and warmly evangelical which means that we prize the gospel of Jesus Christ and seek to establish it at the very centre of our lives and mission.
Our Purpose
As Baptists, we have come to a very important crossroads that will determine the future of our faithfulness to the gospel. Ours is a time of great forgetting and renewal may seem like an impossibility. Perhaps you feel like Ezekiel, standing over the valley of dry bones with that question ringing in your ears, “Can these bones live?” If renewal depends on us alone, nothing will come of it. Renewal, however, is a powerful work of God. He’s only called us to be faithful. Pleading with the Lord for renewal and faithfulness are key. That is what AMBER is all about. If the Lord wills, He will bring renewal. In the meantime, as we trust Him, we will be working very hard at producing resources, creating opportunities for growth and learning, collaborating with local churches, and encouraging pastors toward greater faithfulness.
Our Emphases
Word Saturated
We desire to establish and defend a high view of Scripture. We believe in the authority, inerrancy, necessity, sufficiency, and clarity of Scripture. Where the Scriptures are properly held, the people of God are sufficiently equipped for the work of the ministry, the body of Christ is built up, and the church is spurred on toward unity, maturity, and stability amid the turbulence of our time (Eph. 4:12-17). The Scriptures alone are sufficient to ground our unity and restore the prophetic voice of the church.
Gospel Centred
We desire to see evangelical renewal, which is to say that we preach Christ and Him crucified. The gospel has become a catchword in our day, standing in for absolutely everything and simultaneously meaning nothing at all. We will work to recover first clarity on what the gospel is and then a renewed sense of urgency in preaching Christ in all His saving beauty to the lost.
Distinctly Baptist
We desire to see the retrieval of the distinctive principles of Baptist ecclesiology (See An Abstract of Principles, pp. 3). The church is the context for the Christian life and the atmosphere in which disciples are made. Much of our heritage has been either forgotten or reinterpreted along progressive lines. The retrieval of our tradition is not only for the sake of tradition, but because we believe that these principles are deeply rooted in the Scripture and thus represent the mind of Christ for the organization of his church. When the church seeks to honour Christ first by submitting to his word, she begins to flourish, and the gospel begins to flourish along with her.
Read “An Abstract of Principles for Baptist Churches”
Our Confession of Faith
Being deeply rooted within the rich confessional heritage of the church, we happily affirm the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon, along with the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation. We also prize the absolute sovereignty of God in all things including the salvation of sinners, and stand firmly within the Reformed tradition. Beyond this, as Baptists, we hold the First London Baptist Confession (1644) and the Second London Baptist Confession (1689) in high regard, seeing them as the most preeminent statements of historic Baptist confessionalism. Standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, and following their example, we have agreed to uphold the following doctrinal statement as a basis for unity and theological vision for a new day.
Meet the Council
Michael Lorusso
Editor and Communications Director for AMBER
and Pastor of Preaching and Vision of Providence Baptist Church, High River, AB.
