The Future of the Progressive Churches of Christ: The Christian Standard Weighs In (Third Question)

cooperation.jpgHow do we function as independents without encouraging free agency?

The Standard writes,

If a church or ministry in our movement chooses to, it’s easy for them to operate as a “free agent.” There are church planters who have started independent Christian churches and yet seem reluctant to affiliate with our fellowship in any real way. …

Our church plants and megachurches would do well to remember that any success they enjoy is due in part to the fact that they stand on the shoulders of men and women who paved the way to create the autonomy and creativity that today propels our movement forward.

Free agents have a self-centered approach to loyalty. They seldom give back. I have no reservation about asking our church planters to subscribe to brotherhood publications, attend our conventions, give back to their church planting associations, and support our institutions and missionaries.

Good stuff. I agree. Well, I agree in part. But there’s something not quite right here, and I’ve been struggling to put my finger on it for months even before this article was written.

I mean, obviously enough, if we don’t support our own missionaries and our own universities and our own publications, well, they’ll fail and we won’t have them anymore. And that would be bad.

But we need to take a big step back. Before we start demanding loyalty to the “brotherhood,” we need to remind ourselves who the brothers really are, right? You see, old habits are hard to shake. For many of us, for most of our lives, we in the Churches of Christ were the only saved people — and not all of us. Just those in that part of the Churches that agreed on “fellowship” issues — a list that grew with each issue of our periodicals!

Now that we’re getting away from this exclusivism, we have to re-learn what the “brotherhood” is. It’s all who are saved by faith in Jesus — which is a lot bigger than our little slice of the Christian world, isn’t it?

And yet there’s a purpose in having “our” colleges and publications. Well, some of them (there are those that we could really do much better without). I mean, we do have some doctrines and practices that separate us from the rest of the Christian community. We are a little different on baptism, and we’re right. We don’t want to start teaching error on this or denying what we think the Bible says.

And we really do believe that the apostles started weekly communion. We really aren’t planning on becoming Calvinists. And lots of other stuff. We aren’t the same as all our fellow Christians, but we’re the same about what matters most: faith in Jesus.

The other stuff is not trivial. But neither should it divide. And that’s a hard thought to hang on to.

And so, let me suggest a few thoughts.

First, church autonomy, as practiced in the Restoration Movement, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

You see, we don’t practice Biblical autonomy. We practice isolation, and it’s an isolation that at times is downright hateful. I mean, in most towns, there are multiple Restoration Movement churches that enjoy virtually no fellowship — and even where we consider each other saved, well, that just makes that other church part of the competition. I mean, we almost never truly cooperate within the same community.

Our elders never meet to pray or — better yet — study the Bible together. Our preachers may meet for lunch, but not to coordinate ministry, to plan the evangelization of the town, or the like.

As a result, we get along much better with churches in other towns than in our own towns — which plainly brands us as sinners, doesn’t it?

Second, denominations serve legitimate, vital purposes.

We’ve spent the last 150 years damning denominationalism — all the while working very effectively to become a denomination, and to some extent, for good reason.

You see, having our own colleges and universities, our own publishing houses, and our own periodicals is important, because we have needs different from other denominations. We have our own issues to be addressed that are quite different from the issues the Baptists or Methodists, for example, need to wrestle with.

Even if we acknowledge the salvation of those outside our Movement, we still need a certain, healthy separation. We are quite naturally going to want to plant churches that take communion and baptize and otherwise teach as we think the Bible teaches. We want our missionaries to teach our doctrine because, well, we think it’s right.

But this doesn’t mean that we repeat the sin of our congregations and isolate ourselves from our brothers in the other denominations. Rather, just as our congregations should be doing in their home towns, at the denominational level we need to be looking for ways to work and study together with others. We even need to merge denominations when we can agree on enough things.

But we don’t need to seek unity by ecumenical means. Unity cannot come from the top down. It won’t work. Rather, unity can only come congregation by congregation, as we reach out to our brothers in our home towns and learn to work together in the Kingdom.

Of course, we can’t even work with each other at home! We are just terrible at this, but we can do better. Just as the Stone movement and Campbell movement merged congregation by congregation, we can unite Christ’s church by first doing so in our home towns. The denominational institutions will figure out how to catch up later.

Third, in practice, unity comes from a common vision

You know all these great books we’ve been reading about church leadership, about having a vision, and all that? Well, apply those lessons at the denominational level and see what happens!

In a denomination organized autonomously, it’s not easy to create a common vision. We used to do it through our periodicals, but the Churches of Christ don’t have any that can take such a task on.

Nonetheless, the progressive Churches of Christ are muddling along, largely through books and lectureships. It’s not enough. It won’t hold things together for long, but it’s all we have right now.

Anyway, the universities are in a position to help the Churches think through the vision thing. They can host lectureships and publish books that ask what we need to be doing as a body — what should be the uniting vision of the Churches of Christ (or the Churches of Christ and independent Christian Churches)?

It’s not an easy question. I have an idea or two, but I’d rather leave it as a question for now. If we aren’t the people saved by a cappella music, who are we?

Or should we abandon our history and our community and drift into a unbranded evangelicalism? There’s a case to be made for that as well, you know.

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.
This entry was posted in The Future of the Progressive Churches of Christ, Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to The Future of the Progressive Churches of Christ: The Christian Standard Weighs In (Third Question)

  1. Joe Baggett says:

    This article reeks of denominationalism. The "you owe us" tone is a foul stench. I wish all the publications in for all the Restoration movement churches would cease tomorrow. I really think they do more harm than good. When I read articles like this I want to vomit. I know that the only ones I can even begin to stomach are Wineskins, and Grace Centered Magazine. Sometimes the Christian Chronicle, but of late their reporting is just is as "denial based" as Neil Anderson's GA article to which I had a visceral reaction. I was studying how what percentage of the readership of these publications is under the age of 40. Only 3.6% of the readership of these publications is 40 or younger. Denominations and their movements are dead!
    As I mentioned before each congregation will have to work out these issues for themselves there is no Pope or Bishop that will answer these questions for us. Although in the last 10 years people such as Dr. Phil Slate and many other Bible professors have self proclaimed themselves as the people who can come figure it out for your church. Sounds like denominationalism to me!
    The sociological and religious factors that provided the catalysts for the RM no longer exist. Our "RM plea" means nothing to the Postmodern America. The unchurched and dechurched people today are not asking the theological questions that all the denominations did for the last 150 years. They are not asking what is approved for a specific religious act in a formal assembly. They are not asking who is qualified to be a deacon or elder. The RM would have never come to be if it were not for the existing older denominations. A Baptist minister is the one who taught A.C about the importance of adult baptism, he did not come up with it on his own. In fact it is this Baptist minister who baptized him as an adult.
    Are there values from the RM I appreciate? Yes! Do I believe that the RM churches are what God had in mind or what Jesus commissioned to be his followers? NO! The main thing about this whole issue is this RM churches especially the churches of Christ were formed on basically one hermeneutic or method of interpreting scripture which was the beginning of our denominationalism. Now people in many RM churches have realized that the hermeneutic is and was human and had many flaws. The misunderstanding is that we must all have the same one. To my knowledge no one has formally proposed a new hermeneutic for the churches of Christ and even if they did who would make the decision for everyone. F. Laggard made an attempt in his book the “Cultural church”. This heritage thing means nothing to the emerging generations. I was in an ACU lectureship last year and the speaker asked who would be sad if the RM churches basically went extinct in the USA? Most of the people over 40 raised their hands, only one under 40 raised his hand. Abandoning our “history” will not really lead to a “drift” into general evangelicalism. The people in the churches of Christ and RM churches are going to have to do something many that many have not done in a long time if ever; think for themselves!

  2. Jay
    What is the pattern?
    We can be followers of Jesus and very Biblical and change our worship services in 100’s of ways. We can have dozens of opinions about leadership in the local congregation. This is normal for people who know of their freedom in Christ.

    But we cannot be followers of Jesus and.
    -Be filled with a spirit of arrogance, conceit and judgment of others instead of love.

    We must follow the pattern of Jesus of loving our Father with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.
    We must love our neighbor as ourselves.
    We must love our enemies and those who insult us and give us trouble.

    The pattern is in the attitudes expressed in beginning of the sermon on the Mount.

    There is this model in Jesus saying over and over, “Follow me.” Think of the mission given prior to His ascension.
    “Teach them to obey what
    I
    Commanded.” This I is critical because others want us to teach things that Jesus has not commanded.

    Jesus taught that we are to love God and not love money.
    Jesus taught that He wants us reaching out to the poor, hungry, strangers, aliens, prisoners and the sick. That is the pattern of our work.

    When we see Him as the pattern we will be driven to salvation by grace. He taught the same in Luke 15 and 18 and other places. We need to get the message out that Jesus died in our place and paid for our sins with His blood. We need to get it out that we can be adopted children of God in Him. Too many people are dying without experience the knowledge of the Savior.

    Thanks so much for pushing us to think and being open to new thought yourself.
    Love,
    Larry Wishard
    Minister SE church of Christ
    14601 E. Yale Ave.
    Aurora, CO 80014
    303-755-7979

  3. I just happened across this post and its comments. I’m writing at this late date in order to say that it is uncharitable and just plain wrong to characterize Phil Slate as a self-promoting church doctor. Anyone who knows Phil Slate knows that such impressions simply do not match up with the spirt of that fine man.

Comments are closed.