The Gist of it All

There really is a God who wants your existence on this earth and beyond to be the BEST it can be.  This God will do whatever it takes to give you the best, except force it on you. Want to know more?  Keep reading:
 
God

We believe that there is a God. It would be foolish to try and describe God in a paragraph on a page, or on a website; more than foolish, it would be impossible. The best way to know God is to spend time with God.  There are no quick and easy ways to fully or accurately describe God; so pardon us while we try to summarize some of the basics of what we believe about God:
  
God is mysterious - if you live forever you still won't be able to even half-way begin to understand God. At the underground, we don't pretend to understand God; we don't have God in a box. We appreciate God's mysteriousness and we are constantly getting to know God more fully.

God is real - might not understand God, but you can know because God is real makes himself known (mainly Jesus and through the Bible).

God is love - If you have to pick one adjective to begin describing God, it is "love." God loves all of creation, including you, and wants what is best for you.
 
Jesus Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ is a man who was born nearly 2000 years ago in the area known as Palestine . Because all people have a distorted notion of who God is (we all tend to make God a "bigger & better me"), God became a man in order to clear up the confusion so that we could really know God. Although we don't fully understand it, we believe that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% human (I guess you can do that when you're God). By showing us the real God, Jesus makes it possible for us to have a real relationship with God. Because of Jesus, we know what pleases God, what's important to God, and what God wants for our lives.

We believe that Jesus was killed by men who cherished their own little notions about God more than the truth about God (deep down, we're all like those men). But Jesus proved himself to be God by coming back from the dead (I guess you can do that too if you're God). We believe that people who trust Jesus and follow him will also have life after death.
 
The Bible

We believe the Bible is God's completely true story about who he is, what he has done, what he is doing, and what he is going to do. It is a record of humanity's relationship with God and it was written by humans who were inspired by God. Because humans wrote the Bible, it reflects their backgrounds, styles, and uses of language. The Bible is God's untainted and perfect message concerning all things related to knowing God, pleasing God, and being connected to God.
 
People

We believe that all people are creations of God and that each person is of infinite value to God (when was the last time someone told you that you were infinitely valuable?). God adores each and every person, regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, behavior, height, weight, political affiliation and so on. In fact, the diversity of the earth's population is not only pleasing to God; it is an expression of God's tremendous creativity.  All people matter to God.
 
Because each person is a creation of God, each of us has a longing to be with God and to please God. However, God has created us with the freedom to do whatever we want. And against our better judgment we all choose at some point to do that which displeases God (see "Sin"). We all live with the tension of wanting to be near God while simultaneously thinking that we know better than God.
 
Sin

If you've hung around churches very much, you've heard a lot about "sin." Here's what we believe about it. We believe that sin is the garbage that keeps us from being connected to God and to each other.  Sin is the stupid stuff we do and have done to us that makes our life a mess.
 
Not only is sin the stuff we do, it is also the state of being separated by God because of what we've done. When we sin (and everybody has), we get disconnected from God because we take God's perfect plan for our lives and exchange it with what we believe is a better plan. In other words, we act like selfish fools and think that we know better than God.

In his infinite mercy, God does not force his ways on us. Although this is mighty nice of him, it means that we have to choose to accept his love, his forgiveness, and his work of reestablishing the relationship.
 
The Church

We believe the church is the collection of Jesus-followers in the past, present and future. This means that the church is people, not a building, or a place, or an institution.

The church exists both universally (all the believers everywhere and throughout history) and locally (all the believers in a given local congregation). The underground is one local expression of the universal church. We are made up of imperfect people who are responding day by day in all our relationships to God's stunning grace.
  
Real life

We are connected to God in only one way - by choosing to accept the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation God offers to us by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. If we ask him to, God treats us as if we were Jesus (fully perfect, fully without sin, fully welcomed into God's presence). There is nothing we can do to earn God's favor or forgiveness; both are given because of God's goodness (not ours) and because of what Jesus has done (not because of what we do).

When we accept this new and real life, God begins the process of changing our hearts and minds from the inside out and making our character more and more like Jesus' character. And as we have been connected to God, we also have the hope for being connected to other people.
 
The End of the Story

We believe that in his time and in his own way, God will bring the world as we know it to an end. According to his promise, Jesus will return to earth in a real and visible way. When he returns, Jesus will judge every person who has ever lived and he will begin a new and eternal era of God's reign. The people who followed Jesus and accepted him as the path to God will live with God forever. Those who rejected Jesus will forever be allowed to live out their choice to be separate from God and all that he gives (hope, love, meaning, peace, etc.).