Our Mission
Our Core Values
- Honor: We lift up and celebrate God in worship and lifestyle.
- Proclaim: We boldly share the Truth of the saving grace of Jesus Christ through evangelism.
- Connect: We welcome all generations into Christian fellowship building unity in the family of God.
- Equip: We grow in Christ through Biblical knowledge and application through discipleship.
- Love: We serve the needs of our congregation, community, and world, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Our Foundational Truths
- The Bible — is God’s Word to us, is without error, inspired in it’s original form and relevant for today.
- The Trinity — We believe in the trinity, one God, eternally existing in three persons
- God the Father — We acknowledge God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe, infinitely perfect, and intimately acquainted with all our ways.
- God the Son — We trust Jesus Christ as our Lord — Son of God who came in human flesh — the object of our worship and the subject of our praise.
- God the Holy Spirit — We recognize the Holy Spirit as God’s presence here on earth, constantly at work convicting, comforting, empowering, and indwelling the life of the Believer.
- The sinfulness of humanity — All mankind is born with a sinful nature separating us from God.
- Salvation — is God’s free gift available to all; but only those who accept it through faith alone, apart from works, trusting in the shed blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sin will live eternally with Christ.
- Life in Christ — It is the response of all Christians to live under the lordship of Jesus Christ and under the control of the Holy Spirit, growing and maturing in obedience to His Word and in Christ-like character, faithfully loving and serving Him and others.
- The great commission — All believers are called to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in all the world.
- The return of Christ — We anticipate the Lord’s personal, visible, imminent return to the earth to gather his church, to judge mankind and to establish his kingdom.
Our History
The Evangelical Covenant Church of International Falls was officially incorporated in 1930 as the “Holler Mission Church of Holler, Minnesota,” and was affiliated with the “Swedish Mission Covenant of America.” (from its Articles of Incorporation, dated July 6th, 1930). It began when the Northwest Mission Association, the forerunner of the Northwest Conference, acted on an invitation to hold evangelistic meetings in the Northern outpost of International Falls. Home mission work began soon after this, and small gatherings began forming the nucleus of the fledgling congregation.
Gatherings grew, and a building was constructed in the adjacent village of Holler, Minnesota to bring the groups together. In keeping with its strong Swedish roots, church records reported that, “The first service held at the new Holler Mission Church was a 6 am ‘Yuleta’ Service in 1926. The plaster was still wet. Seats were improvised out of nail kegs. A good turnout was reported.” Outreach to the International Falls area was the foundation of this church’s beginning.
Along with the denomination’s basic tenet: “Where is it Written?”, the congregation’s faithfulness to the Word of God, coupled with evangelistic outreach both at home and to the world, has been the essence of its history.
Our Denomination
We are a part of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), a rapidly growing multi-ethnic denomination of more than 875 congregations in the United States and Canada with ministries on five continents of the world.
Founded in 1885 by Swedish immigrants, the ECC values the Bible as the Word of God, the gift of God’s grace and ever-deepening spiritual life that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the importance of extending God’s love and compassion to a hurting world, and the strength that comes from unity within diversity.
Within the Evangelical Covenant Church, we are part of the Northwest Conference.