FAQ

1. What denomination is Southside Bible Church?
SBC is non-denominational. We are not affiliated nor are we a member of any religious affiliation. However, we enjoy working with and fellowship with many other Christ-centered, Bible teaching, evangelistic churches.

2. What distinguishes SBC from other local churches?
We at SBC believe the Lord has led us to teach the Bible verse-by-verse. Our Sunday morning worship service, discipleship hour, children's classes, student groups and small groups are consistent in teaching the Bible and reminding believers that it was written for them and their personal understanding.

3. What is the music like at SBC?
Music during the Saturday night and Sunday morning worship service is a blend of contemporary songs and traditional hymns. Worship is typically led by a small group of singers and a small band. Our music places a major emphasis on worship rather than entertainment.

4. Will SBC ever become a mega-church?
We believe that God uses all kinds and sizes of local churches. We also believe that God desires local churches to regularly seek His will, realizing that the church should always be willing to change to accommodate His will. At the present time, SBC does not have the vision to become a "mega-church." We currently see about 1,000 people worshipping at Southside every Sunday.  Our goal is to faithfully minister to the people the Lord gives us.

5. What does SBC believe about salvation?
We know that many people think they are Christians but have never really encountered God in a personal way. We believe that a person's salvation is a gift from God, because of His grace. We seek to always be teaching and telling people about the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that individual people may have the privilege of responding to the gift of salvation God is offering….by saying: “Thank you Jesus for dying for me. Here’s my life—it’s yours. I want to be your servant and do things your way from now on.” No one can earn salvation. We can only receive it as a gift from Jesus.

6. What does SBC believe concerning communion?
Based on the Word of God, we believe that communion is a wonderful "memorial" that proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ until His return. At SBC, we celebrate the Lord's Supper about once a month. We invite all believers who are worshipping with us to take part. We have no strong conviction as to how often we should celebrate communion. We feel that partaking in communion monthly helps prevent it from becoming a weekly ritual. We believe the early church probably celebrated communion as often as two times a day.  We believe this meaningful memorial in no way contributes to any person's salvation.

7. How is SBC governed?
Our church has chosen to be "congregationally governed," meaning that final decision-making is placed in the hands of our local church membership. We have a church constitution, which we, as mere men, have written in a way that we believe assists us in proper action and which reminds us that God wrote the Bible, which is not frail and will stand throughout all time as the final authority for all decisions and practice.

Our constitution provides for an "elder board" comprised of Godly men from our church who are challenged to serve our fellowship by teaching doctrine and by meeting the spiritual needs of our people. The objective of the board is to demonstrate our belief that Godly living is more important than authority.

8. How does a person join the church?
Our qualifications for church membership are two-fold: (1) give testimony that you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, and Him only, for your salvation, and (2) agree with the church's mission and its goal to reach the community for Christ. Candidates are then introduced to the congregation during a regular worship service and received into membership at that time. Even though baptism is strongly emphasized, it is not a requirement for membership at SBC, because we believe baptism is an act of obedience, but does not contribute to a person’s salvation.

9. When will the church build?
The church currently has property located at 1225 Smokey Row Road, in the Center Grove area of Greenwood. Plans to build on that land have been put on hold as the church leases our current space across from the Greenwood Park Mall. We are very pleased with our current location, and wonder if the Lord would lead us to build in this area. Meanwhile, SBC continues to look at existing real estate. SBC is not opposed to incurring debt for this purpose; however, we maintain a conservative approach with respect to burdening our membership with large, stressful financial commitments.