Who We Are
First Church of God of Grand Rapids, MN, Inc. is an inter-generational family seeking to glorify God by being and making disciples of Jesus. Let us warmly welcome you into our community where everyone feels at home.
Missions
At the First Church of God, we support many international, state, and local non-profit and missionary work, including:
Larry and Leann Sellers
with Church of God Ministries
Affiliation
First Church of God of Grand Rapids, MN, Inc. was born in 1909 when a number of Bible Studies and Prayer Groups in smaller, surrounding towns decided to become one congregation making its home in Grand Rapids. We are an autonomous congregation that chooses to voluntarily affiliate, interdependently, with The Church of God Reformation Movement that is headquartered in Anderson, Indiana. The Church of God Reformation Movement is
“a global fellowship of Christians serious about the faith and its relevance in today’s world. It’s a “radical” movement, but NOT in the sense of extreme or out-of-control or oddly innovative as many revolutionary groups are today. To the contrary, there’s a wonderfully positive sense of being radical. It’s a reflection of Jesus himself, a daring to go to the roots and basics of the faith for the sake of God’s mission in this world. Good fruit cannot be expected without good roots in the right soil…The Church of God Movement is made up of…believers fully committed to the actual rule of God in their lives and congregations. This Movement desires to recover for our time the essence of New Testament Christianity. It has courageously served the Lord Jesus in this serious way since the 1880s”
(Barry L. Callen, God’s on the Move! The Church of God Movement).
Larry and Leann Sellers
Missionaries to French-Speaking Africa
Membership
Membership is based on our confession of faith in Jesus Christ. We don’t practice formal membership. It’s our faith in Jesus that makes us a member. Having said that, we do have a couple of expectations of those who choose to enter and participate in our church family. Two expectations: salvation, coming alive in Jesus Christ, and sanctification, then becoming a yielded and willing instrument of God’s Spirit investing selflessly in the church’s mission. These are what it means to be a Christian and what it takes to be a member of our congregation, and by extension, The Church of God Reformation Movement.