1. The Scriptures: We believe God inspired all the words of the Bible without error in the original writings to give mankind his authoritative message.
2. The Godhead: We believe in one God eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. Jesus Christ: We believe in his full deity, his virgin birth, his real humanity, his sinless life, his substitutionary death, his bodily resurrection, his ascension into heaven, his present ministry as High Priest and his future personal return to this earth.
4. The Holy Spirit: We believe in his full deity. He convicts sinners and indwells, seals and places believers into the body of Christ. He gives spiritual gifts and the power to live the Christian life.
5. Man: We believe that God created all things as described in Genesis. We believe that the first man, Adam, sinned, bringing spiritual death to all mankind, who, therefore, stand condemned, making the new birth absolutely necessary.
6. Salvation: We believe that God gives eternal life to those who repent and put their faith in Christ alone, justifying them by the blood of Christ and imputing his righteousness to them.
7. The Church: We believe in the universal church to which all believers belong. We believe in the importance of the local church which is made up of believers who gather for worship, fellowship and teaching. We believe in the responsibility of the Church to fulfil the Great Commission of Christ, preaching the Gospel to all nations.
8. The Future: We believe in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the eternal blessedness of believers, the eternal punishment of unbelievers.
Open Air Campaigners International is an association of autonomous OAC Nations that are bound together by:
- The OACI statement of faith;
- OACI policy;
- The OACI statement of purpose;
- Fellowship and trust.
In other words, OACI is not a centralised international missionary society. OAC is registered in a number of countries, and these national organisations (or nations, to use our jargon) together make up OACI. The aim is to allow the work in each country to take on its own character under local leadership while maintaining a common direction and vision.
A worldwide conference takes place every four years (the most recent one took place in 2016 in Germany). The conference is chaired by our International President, currently Rob George.
For practical reasons, the nations are divided into four regional zones:
- The North American and Caribbean Zone (which covers Asia, for the time being)
- The Latin American Zone
- The European Zone, (which covers Africa, for the time being)
- The South East Asia Pacific Zone
Each zone meets annually to discuss matters of regional interest.
Again, our policy book states that...
Open Air Campaigners International is an interdenominational ministry of evangelism committed to preaching the Gospel to the unreached through open-air and other outreaches and mobilising the Church to do the same.
Our historical roots are very much in open-air evangelism, and many nations still spend much of their time in the open air. However, our desire is to be flexible in our methodology while maintaining a clear commitment to proclamation evangelism. In some circumstances we recognise that other methods are most appropriate.
By 'the unreached', we obviously mean those who have not responded to the gospel, but also that we focus our efforts on those who are not usually contacted through traditional church activity. OACI is committed to taking the gospel to the people, not waiting for the people to come to us!
