our story
Antioch Baptist Church was originally founded in 1991 as Berkland Baptist Church-Boston. Our founding pastor, Paul Kim, and his wife, Rebekah, started Berkland in northern California and had served there for ten years when they felt God’s call to plant a church in Boston. As a result of God’s faithfulness, BBC-Boston grew over the years to change the lives of many through a relationship with Jesus Christ and his church.
After twenty years of ministry in Boston, Pastor Paul and Rebekah again obeyed God’s call—this time to retire from our church ministry and pass leadership to the many staff they had raised up, with Pastor David Um becoming senior pastor and Pastor Paul continuing on as pastor emeritus. The start of this new era brought with it a new name: on March 6, 2011, Berkland Baptist Church became Antioch Baptist Church. Our core values and vision, however, remain the same.
In particular, we have renewed our focus on missions. The first-century church at Antioch sent out Paul and Barnabas as the first missionaries, as recorded in Acts 13. We desire to live out that same calling as a church in Boston, inspired and encouraged by the words of Isaiah 52:7: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!” We know that God’s grace has brought us to where we are now, and we continue to depend on him to lead our church according to his purpose.
our values
At Antioch Baptist, we work to build up God’s church based on biblical models: We view the church as a body, in which all members are connected with each other and to God through Christ, the head. And we regard the church as the family of God, in which all members are related to each other and to God the Father through the blood of Jesus Christ. This ideal of unity and love can become reality when we allow our faith in Jesus Christ to permeate all areas of our lives, from home to school to work.
We are a church that loves to study the Bible, pray, sing, eat, and carry life’s burdens together. We are also committed to letting the world know who Jesus Christ is. Simply put, we strive to obey Jesus’ Great Commandment to love God and love one another (Matthew 22:37-39) and to fulfill His Great Commission to bring his message to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19-20).
our beliefs
The following beliefs are excerpted from the Baptist Faith and Message. A complete version is available here.
The Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.
God
There is one and only one living and true God. …The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
God the Father
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. …God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. …He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin.
God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. …He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. …He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.
Man
Man is the special creation of God, in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. …By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. … The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore every person of every race possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
Salvation
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.
God’s Purpose of Grace
Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. …All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.
The Church
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.
our distinctives
The Word of God
What is the most important thing in our church? Antioch is committed first and foremost to studying and living out the Word of God. In a world that operates according to programs and agendas, we are tempted, like the busy-body Martha, to forget the most important thing. At Antioch, we are reminded that we need to be like Mary, who sat and listened with reverence and delight at Jesus’ feet, before we actively serve like Martha.
Antioch is committed to the study and teaching of God’s word through devotional time, Bible studies, Sunday School, Sunday messages, seminars, retreats and discipleship training for personal growth and for the purposes of training and evangelism.
Value of One Soul
In Luke 15:3-7, the shepherd who lost one sheep leaves the rest of his flock of ninety-nine to go and find the one lost sheep. Though impractical and ludicrous by the standards of our culture, God loves every person as tenaciously and limitlessly as this shepherd. At Antioch, we experience this same personal love from God and strive to consider each other as valuable as God does.
Lordship
Mark 14:1-9 is an inspirational example of lordship in the woman who breaks her alabaster jar to anoint Jesus with her most precious possession. This act captures the essence of what it means to serve Jesus as the Lord of our lives. At Antioch, we strive to emulate such whole-hearted devotion as the only appropriate response to God’s extravagant love.
Team Ministry – Covenant Relationships
The Bible abounds with examples of beautiful relationships of love and trust. We believe that God desires that His church not only devote itself to loving Him intimately, but also to loving one another and working together for the salvation of others. Examples like Paul and Timothy, David and Jonathan, Naomi and Ruth serve as our models for covenant relationships. It is within these covenant relationships that we cultivate godly love, obedience, trust and sacrifice. At Antioch, we want to allow God to use our covenant relationships as channels for His will.
Family of God
In a world where relationships are disconnected and families fragmented, the family of God provides a place of true connection. As we cultivate relationships, the church becomes a web of love, and we participate in continuing God’s story. At Antioch, one of the ways we endeavor to build up God’s family is through fellowship. Whether it is through food, games, trials or victories, we join together as one body with Christ as the head.
World Missions
Beginning with one person, and extending to the whole world, the Antioch family obeys God’s commission to share His Good News to “the ends of the earth.” As we expand God’s tent, we are committed to strengthening each stake, holding nothing back, as we send out and support our long-term and short-term missionaries all over the world.
Prayer and Intercession
Prayer is one of the greatest privileges of Christian life. Individually and corporately we experience God’s power through prayer, even in seemingly impossible situations. The Word of God and Prayer – listed here as the first and last of our principles – serve as bookends holding together all the other values of Antioch.