Negev Institute

The advisors, lecturers, and therapists, who work with the Negev Institute come from a variety of Christian traditions; from charismatic, to traditional/liturgical, to broadly evangelical, and from the churches and congregations that live in the spaces between these histories and traditions.

As we want to create resources that can be utilized widely in different Christian denominations and networks, we approach our mission with the goal to find wide agreement between different groups of believers, while also acknowledging that our work cannot be separated from our core organizational values.

Please know, that as we are invited into faith communities to speak on areas around social/behavioral health, we will work to be respectful of any particular beliefs/doctrines of those communities, even when some value may differ from those that we hold.

However, though the Negev Institute desires to be open-handed and charitable to all groups, we also believe that there is value in clarity, so we will share below the committed beliefs of the Institute's mission.

The Faith that Forms Us

As an organization, we are committed to the shared goals and views of confessing Christians; believing in the real and physical incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, a full and complete manifestation of humanity and divinity. And that this truth has meaningful and practical implications in how we should see our current lives, our histories, and our futures. 

We believe that all Christians are called to missional living that engages in the world, but also to remember that the world is not as it should be, and the work of the Church is to move in support of the coming kingdom of God, even though we do the work imperfectly.

The Negev Institute has adopted the following Statement of Belief, which has been, in part adapted from documents such as the National Association of Evangelicals Statement of Faith and the Lausanne Covenant. The core points of the following statement have been affirmed by more than 70 Christian denominations; Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and more, included. We mean for our statement to share broad consensus among confessing Christians. Our full statement is as follows: 

• There is one eternal and fully sovereign God in three co-eternal and co-equal Persons (the Trinity):  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit/Ghost.
• God created the heavens and the earth, and humans were a part of His creation, and that God declared his creation to be good.
• That through the actions and choices of humans, the world became affected by sin. Sin is a condition that keeps the humans from being in right relationship with themselves, with other people, with God.
• All humans are personally affected by sin and have sinned themselves, But humans still bear God’s image and are therefore worthy of dignity and honor. 
• Jesus Christ, the Son in the Trinity, was conceived by the Holy Spirit/Ghost born of a virgin and was both fully God and fully man. Having all the wisdom and power of God but also experiencing a full human life.
• Jesus lived a sinless life, taught about how God wants us to live and how to see ourselves and others. Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit/Ghost, and lives today at the right hand of the Father.
• If anyone desires the forgiveness of their sins, they must repent of their sins, believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and they will be forgiven.
• All those who are truly born again will seek to live out the teachings of Jesus, summarized by the two greatest commands: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself."
• Jesus is coming one day to usher in his final and perfect kingdom on earth. On that day he will judge the living and the dead. All those who believe and obey Jesus will live forever with him in the new heavens and new earth. All those who don’t believe in Jesus will face an irreversible punishment for their sin and rejection of God.
• The Christian Bible, with the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament, is inspired by God and is therefore the ultimate and final authority for all matters of faith and practice.