Why Some in Churches of Christ Feel Stuck or Confused and What To Do About It

What I am about to say is based on my experience both personally and from conversations with others in leadership positions. This won’t be universally true for all churches but will have principles that will be true for a large number of churches.

I grew up in the Church of Christ in the 1980s. We were very sure of who we were, our doctrine and our position in the broader world of Christianity. We had a well defined identity with well defined identity markers. I don’t recall it being taught officially and outright but there were clear undertones that we were the only true Christians and were the only ones going to heaven.

I am not saying all of that is right and good. I am saying it was a different time for many of our churches than what we see today and there was a cohesiveness of what made one a “Church of Christ” in a way that isn’t so clear today. We knew who we were and thought we could back it up straight from the Bible.

In Comes the Uncertainty

One of the big reasons things are less clear than they were 30-40 years ago is because our congregations are autonomous/locally governed. That means any congregation can put “church of Christ” on the sign and there isn’t anyone who can stop them. Or a church that makes significant changes can still claim the heritage and name. There is no big denominational structure to make anything official. And while I am not for large denominational structure, that kind of structure makes things simpler in identifying “who is one of us” and who isn’t…if that is the sort of activity you really care to engage in.

Second, people have moved on from playing that game…the who is in/out…who is one of us and who isn’t game because we saw it abused in so many ways. It is exhausting to have that much responsibility placed on one’s shoulders! We also saw the mean spiritedness of it all. We saw even ungodliness and unrighteousness in the way people tried to ferret out who was in and who was out and what criteria we used to make that determination.

It turns out our standard for judging in-ness and out-ness was pretty arbitrary and not uniformally applied across the board. We made a lot of personal exceptions while not allowing others to make exceptions…we were in and they were out and yet we were all making exceptions! Eventually people see through that kind of thing, especially if your questions aren’t taken seriously when you ask them.

What allowed us to make those exceptions was our “hermenuetic” which is the way one interprets the Bible. We hinged everything on “command, example and necessary inference” (CENI). And while I don’t have the time to go into the issues with that you can read my thoughts on it here, here and here. The idea is we obey commands (except where we don’t), we follow examples (except where we don’t), and where there is no command or example we take what we have and make inferences to follow (which is extremely arbitrary in its actual application).

What allows us to make these exceptions? Our answer was “expediency” – that we don’t have to follow certain examples if there is an expedient alternative. For instance, they didn’t have church buildings. They met in homes. But expediency allows us to build a building and fund that building in perpetuity because the building allows space for the congregation to do something we are told to do – assemble. You get the idea.

Quick Summary

Let me stop to sum up my thoughts to this point. We had a unified identity in the 1980s (and prior) that hung on a sectarian spirit built upon a shaky and inconsistently applied hermeneutic. That sectarian spirit of pride (we are the only ones) and inadequate hermeneutic (CENI) allowed us to create identifying markers that set us apart as the true Christians: local autonomy, baptism for salvation/the 5 steps, acappella worship, 5 acts of worship all done in one assembly, etc. We knew these things by heart. We knew the scriptures that we could go to that proved our position through proof texting (taking verses out of context to make a point).

To be clear, I am not saying we got every one of these identifying markers wrong. I am saying that we had a lot of consistency on these issues across our congregations because our combo of doctrines and practices made us distinct among denominations and allowed us the liberty to distance ourselves from others due to our perceived doctrinal purity. All of that comes out of the wrong kind of spirit.

But today all of those things that once united us are in question in many churches that say they are a “church of Christ.” I am not saying this is good or bad. I am just describing the state of things. Many more congregations have instruments. Many have women in leadership positions. Many aren’t so sure baptism is essential for salvation. And yet their sign out front still says “Church of Christ.”

Today we have all this variety and more grace/openness toward other believers as being actual Christians. Heaven will be more crowded than we thought, to say it simply. And once we say what defined us no longer creates a meaningful distinction between ourselves and others then we have to change the way we understand what creates identity.

I was once talking with another minister who asked, “If we aren’t the only ones, then why do we even exist?” Well, lots of reasons…to be on mission, to show love and compassion, to demonstrate unity with other believers, etc. But do you hear where that question comes from? A mindset that has separation as a requirement for identity. Shame on me for having agreed with this mindset in my early years.

How do we determine identity?

And guess what…we can go back to the Bible to see what creates identity because the Bible is actually pretty clear on that! How novel to go to the Bible to understand identity rather than constructing a system not in the Bible to create our identity!

What I am about to share is a big ticket item for Churches of Christ going forward, imo. I would love to get your feedback on what I am about to say.

If you went through the Bible to find out what it is that identifies us as the people of God, what would you find? And whoever fits the bill isn’t just “one of us” – no – they belong to Christ just as we do!

Not every verse creates an identifying markers just like not every command or example creates another identifying marker. This is what we missed all these years. For instance, in Judaism they had over 600 laws but not all of the made you Jewish. The things that made you Jewish were: kosher, circumcision, Sabbath and holy days. How do we know these four things stand above the rest? Because the Bible says so…the penalty for rejecting any of these things is to no longer be part of the community of faith. BTW, this was the big conversation in Acts 15 post Acts 10 – what does one have to do to be identified as a Christian? Must they become Jewish (the 4 things above) to be a Christian? Read Acts 15 for the answer 🙂

Christianity also has identifying markers

Here is what makes my list as best as I understand it…because all through scripture there are identifying markers of the people of God. I would like to discuss this piece because there is so much to all of this that I am sure the list could improve.

• Faith in Christ – pistis. Do you trust Christ and try to follow Him? (Eph 2:8). You aren’t a Christian if you don’t have faith.
• Repentance & Baptism. You cannot come to Christ without repenting. Jesus said a disciple is a baptized person who obeys his teaching (Matt 28:19-20). Baptism is where God raises us from spiritual death to spiritual life (Rom 6:1-6). You aren’t a Christian if you are spiritually dead.
• Indwelling of the Spirit producing the fruit of the Spirit (Acts 2:38, 1 Cor 3 & 6, Galatians 5:22, Eph 4:3, etc). You aren’t a Christian without the Holy Spirit.
• Being transformed into Christ-likeness. This is the natural path of those who are in Christ (1 Cor 2:16, Rom 15:5, Phil 2:5, Gal 4:19, etc). This transformation is done by the Spirit with our willing participation. This is growing into maturity in Christ…which is a lifelong process.

All of this requires interpretation…we are going to differ some on this list. I just want to make sure that whatever is on my list is something the Bible elevates to this level of importance rather than something I prefer be put at this level of importance.

Once we list what the Bible states is needed to be in the family, our family all of a sudden looks a lot larger! This allows us to get back to having some level of consistency but with a larger sense of identity and connectedness with people in other groups.

It is hard to move forward in confidence if you don’t know who you are and it is hard to know who you are when your identity was based on things that were not fully derived from scripture. So let’s get back to scripture to know who we are and whose we are and lovingly accept the rest of the family!

Last, I want to mention prayer. So much of what makes us a Christian is about relationships. If you feel stuck or confused, pray and ask God to clear things up. Ask Him to give you James 1:5 wisdom. Ask Him to get you spiritually unstuck!

And if you need more info on the road to getting unstuck, I did a video for exactly that that has resonated with a lot of people.