Church in Tyler, Texas

The long answer to “What do you believe?” is on our What We Believe page, which contains our full statement of faith.

The short answer is that together with all Southern Baptist churches in Tyler TX, we affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message. Being reformed, however, our beliefs are most accurately reflected in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

The statement of faith IS the official teaching position of the church. As you probably expect, it’s affirmed by all of our pastoral staff and elders.

But full adherence to our statement of faith IS NOT required for church membership. In short, church membership requires faith in the Triune God of the Bible, affirmation of the basic gospel, and the commitment to a life of growth in Christ-likeness.

Have questions? Contact us. We’d love to talk!

From the pulpit, you’ll hear expository preaching, which, in essence, means that we aim to make the point of the text we’re preaching the point of the sermon. Typically, our expository preaching is verse-by-verse and book-by-book. If you’d like to listen before you come, you can listen to our sermons online.

Our worship music is driven primarily by its content and secondarily by its style.

In practice, we sing old stuff old style, old stuff new style, and new stuff new style.

That means that everyone in attendance will most likely sing a song or two in a style he/she prefers and the rest in a style that’s not his/her favorite. It reiterates to us individually that “it’s not about me.” And that’s a good thing.

You can listen to some of the songs we sing or even listen to the ones we’ll sing this Sunday.

On a typical Sunday, there are about 200 people in Sunday school and about 250 in corporate worship. And on a typical Wednesday night, about 150 of us eat dinner together and participate in classes according to age.

As for the age of our people, we have ~80 kids who are elementary age or younger, ~25 junior high and high school students, a handful of college students, ~60 people in their 20s and 30s, ~50 people in their 40s and 50s, and ~40 people who are 60 and up.

No one likes to show up under (or over) dressed. On Sunday mornings, you’ll find everything from blue jeans and t-shirts to coat & tie.

Unless you’re an extrovert extraordinaire, then you’ll almost certainly feel at least a little out of place—at first. After all, when you’re the “newbie,” you’re aware that everyone else seems to know exactly where to go and what to do. Plus, they all seem to know everybody—except you.

But there’s good news—we were all “newbies” at Sylvania at some point. That means (1) we get it and (2) we pushed through the initial awkwardness (and are really glad we did).

And if you show up, we don’t think it will take you long to figure out that we’re (actually) glad you’re with us.