WHEREAS, the National Association of Evangelicals believes that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ offers men a new birth and calls them to a new life, and

WHEREAS, we believe that the Christian faith which unites a believer to the Lord Jesus Christ through the new birth also inescapably unites him to all other believers who share the same vital union of which the bond is the Holy Spirit;

THEREFORE, we believe that the visible unity among believers in Jesus Christ rests upon agreement on the nature of God, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Scriptures, the Christian life, and the believer’s hope.

The community of the faithful called Christians is a worshiping, witnessing, and serving fellowship which is in the world, but not of the world; human, but not to be identified with lost humanity; serving mankind in love primarily by witnessing to lost men the saving grace of Christ which is able to call out of the world and into the church those who are redeemed.

Established in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and rooted and grounded in love, evangelical Christians strive first of all to bear the witness which will add members to the household of faith, the Body of Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit. But they do not fail also to accept such motions toward visible unity as that selfsame Spirit may bring to pass among like-minded believers.

Visible unity will never be sought for its own sake; nor founded upon any other rock than that which is Christ; nor erected by any other means than those which reflect the nature and conditions of new birth in Christ.

When of the Spirit, motions toward unity will always be of conviction and not compromise; of faith first and then of works. Such motions will give promise to clarify faith and not obscure it; to increase the pure testimony of the Gospel and not diminish it; to enrich the spiritual life of believers and not impoverish it

Not all activity in the name of Christian religion accomplishes these ends. That which does, advances the first objective of the church, namely, to magnify the testimony of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the Word of God in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.