'So what kind of church are you, exactly?' It's a question that our visitors often ask. To answer it, we could say that we're four things.

We see ourselves as founded by Christ himself, in the sense that if it weren't for him, we would not be here. We look to the earthly life of Christ as the most perfect model of a human life, to the teaching of Christ as the clearest expression of the mind of God, to the death and resurrection of Christ as the most significant event in world history, and to the continuing rule of Christ as the ultimate authority in our lives as individuals and as a church.

We are convinced that, as the word of God, the Bible is the only reliable guide available to help us to understand God and his purpose for us. The church is therefore committed to learning from the Christian Scriptures and applying what we learn to our lives.

As you might expect from our name, the way we operate as a church is largely in accordance with traditional Baptist values. What that means in practice is that we wait until an individual confesses their own personal faith in Christ before baptising him or her; and that our highest structural authority is the church membership itself (as opposed to - for example - a regional or national body outside the church).

Though we follow a saviour who walked the earth nearly two thousand years ago, and we read a book completed not long afterwards, we remain convinced that this ancient faith speaks to today's world. We are ordinary people from different backgrounds and different parts of Surrey, united by a desire to glorify God in the modern world. We want everyone to feel welcome at CBC, whether they have been a Christian for years, or are thinking about Christianity for the first time.