One In Jesus

It’s ironic that our (in the narrow sense) insistence on cooperating only with those as doctrinally pure as we violates our founding principles. Yes, really.

The one fact is, that Jesus the Nazarene is the Messiah. The evidence upon which it is to be believed is the testimony of twelve men, confirmed by prophecy, miracles, and spiritual gifts. The one institution is baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Every such person is a christian [sic] in the fullest sense of the word, the moment he has believed this one fact, upon the above evidence, and has submitted to the above mentioned institution; and whether he believes the five points condemned or the five points approved by the synod of Dort, is not so much as to be asked of him; whether he holds any of the views of the Calvinists or Arminians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, or Quakers, is never once to be asked of such a person, in order to admission into the christian community, called the church.

Alexander Campbell, “The Foundation of Hope and of Christian Union,” Christian Baptist (April 5, 1824). Notice that the “synod of Dort” was the meeting of church leaders that adopted the five points of Calvinism popularly known as TULIP. Continue reading →

Okay. This is the part where we talk some more about what we lose if we give up our denominations. And it’s not as though they serve no purpose at all. In fact, denominations do quite a lot.

1. Missions. Nearly every denomination does a large part of its mission work through its denominational structure. Even in the Churches of Christ, we find we have to cooperate to do missions — and we cooperate within the denomination. And we have supporting organizations that help us — as elements of our denomination.

I mean, the missionaries are usually trained at one of “our” universities or schools of preaching. They are often supported by various para-church organizations, such as World Radio.

One reason we cooperate via our denominations is we want to convert people to our brand of Christianity. I may not think Calvinism damns, but I do think it’s wrong. Why would I spend good money to convert people to a viewpoint I consider error when I could just easily contribute to a missionary who agrees with me? Continue reading →

I think it’ll help if I say plainly what I’m not saying.

1. I’m not saying that all the denominations should all merge into new super-denomination with a uniform worship pattern, uniform organizational structure, and perfectly uniform doctrine. That was Campbell’s idea, but it’s unworkable; at least it is today.

In a perfect world, this is exactly where we’d be, of course, but this ideal wasn’t achieved even in apostolic times. This is not the cure for division.

2. I’m not saying that we must all become non-denominational community churches — although there’s a lot of appeal to that model. But we can be functionally united without going that far. And one natural result of becoming functionally united is that our old denominational identifiers will not be our self-identities — so maybe something kind of like that happens. But that’s not essential to the proposal. Continue reading →

[re-written and expanded]
We should not ask the question in terms of the future of the progressive Churches of Christ or the Restoration Movement. To ask about our subgroup is to assume that God wants our subgroup to have a future history distinct from his entire church. It’s a false assumption.

Rather, the correct question to ask deals with the future of the church: the real church of Christ, the church universal. And anyone with a lick of sense knows that it’s presently pretty messed up. We Christians are badly divided into thousands of denominations — and our members have lost patience with the divided leadership. Continue reading →

I’ve been trying to think of a simple way of explaining the idea. Let’s try —

* The churches in each community should feel closer to and work more closely with each other than churches of their own denomination elsewhere.

And

* We have to see God’s redemptive mission and our participation in it as central to our Christianity.

We just need to decide that the mission matters most and that we need to fulfill that mission by cooperating with other Christians in town, even if we disagree with them about apostolic succession. That’s about it. Get that right, and the rest will follow.

Let me explain. Continue reading →

Article by LeRoy Lawson

LeRoy Lawson is an international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship International, an agency that supports foreign missions. He writes,

1. We have made our point and it has been adopted by many who are not “us.” We do not now own the movement for restoring New Testament Christianity—if we ever did; and we’re no longer isolated from the larger Christian world—which we certainly were at one time. We find Restorationist soul mates scattered throughout the national and international church scene.

2. We don’t have a distinguishable brand. As has often been pointed out, “Restoration Movement” is a terrible label. So is “Stone-Campbell Movement,” since most people even within the movement don’t know about either Stone or the Campbells. To quote Professor Fred Norris, “Our distinctive is that we have no distinctives.” So, as I said, “they” have trouble figuring out who “we” are Continue reading →