What Kind Of Church Is This?

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Augustinian said:
But to guess, it sounds like one of the restorationist type churches originally founded by Alexander Campbell in the early 19th Century.
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What exactly are restorationist churches?
And the Bible thumping type of churches aren’t my style. At all.
 
This is a most likely a church of Christ congregation. They seek to restore Christianity to 1st Century practices.
  • They don’t recognize any creed. Their motto is “no creed but Christ”.
  • They partake of the Lord’s Supper every week because that was the practice of the 1st Century church
  • They practice baptism by immersion of those who have believed and repented because that is the only baptism recorded in scripture.
  • They believe in baptismal regeneration…that a person is saved by belief, repentance, confession and baptism.
  • They don’t believe in once saved always saved
  • They practice confession of sins to the entire church body
  • The don’t call their preachers pastor because the New Testament doesn’t call them pastor.
  • They sing acapella in worship because the early church sang acapella
  • Each local church is elder led.
  • Each local church is completely independent from each other. They don’t have associations or conferences.
  • They will not use the word trinity, because it is not in the Bible.
  • Many of them (not all) believe that those not in the church of Christ will not be saved because they are not being obedient to God, which of course, means being obedient to their understanding of God’s commands (or lack of commands).
Just as any group of people, they have a “liberal” wing and a “Hardline conservative” wing. The liberal wing is hardly liberal by most standards. Generally the “liberal” wing believe you can be saved even if you are not a coC and think it is okay to sing with a piano. Max Lucado is the most nationally known coC pastor and he is a member of the “liberal” wing. He will speak at non-church of Christ events and other denominations churches.

I know all of this because there are lots of church of Christ in my area and way back in high school I dated a church of Christ girl for 2 and 1/2 years. Ironically, she is now married to a Southern Baptist Pastor.
 
lanman87 said:
  • They don’t recognize any creed. Their motto is “no creed but Christ”.
  • They partake of the Lord’s Supper every week because that was the practice of the 1st Century church
  • They practice baptism by immersion of those who have believed and repented because that is the only baptism recorded in scripture.
  • They believe in baptismal regeneration…that a person is saved by belief, repentance, confession and baptism.
  • They don’t believe in once saved always saved
  • They practice confession of sins to the entire church body
  • The don’t call their preachers pastor because the New Testament doesn’t call them pastor.
  • They sing acapella in worship because the early church sang acapella
  • Each local church is elder led.
  • Each local church is completely independent from each other. They don’t have associations or conferences.
  • They will not use the word trinity, because it is not in the Bible.
  • Many of them (not all) believe that those not in the church of Christ will not be saved because they are not being obedient to God, which of course, means being obedient to their understanding of God’s commands (or lack of commands).
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In churches that believe in Baptism by immersion, which this one does, do most of them recognize a Catholic converts infant Baptism? Or do they generally require the member to be Baptised again?

As far as singing acpaella, thischurch plays and sings modern Christian pop/rock songs.
 
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Just to be clear, Catholics ARE allowed to believe in evolution, right?
 
Hope1960 said:
As far as singing acpaella, thischurch plays and sings modern Christian pop/rock songs.
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The Churches of Christ are split on that. The conservative ones only do a capella. The more adventurous ones will use instruments. The Churches of Christ/Christian Churches are not really a denomination in the sense of having one institutional identity. It’s more of a family of churches that have shared identity, traditions and history.
 
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lanman87 said:
  • They sing acapella in worship because the early church sang acapella
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Not exactly.

The Restoration/Stone Campbell Movement split 3 ways.

The Church of Christ Disciples of Christ, originally split over some administrative matters, is now one of the more mainstream denominations.

The Churches of Christ (non-music or as we called then “non-piano”)

The Independent Christian Church/Church of Christ. NACC. This is the group I know like the back of my hand 🙂

Actually an informative overview The Churches of Christ, the Christian Churches, the Disciples of Christ | Christian Research Institute
lanman87 said:
They practice confession of sins to the entire church body
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My dad is listed in the Encyclopedia of the Stone Campbell Movement as are many of the family friends, that is how much I was raised in this group. I have never heard of public confession. Not once, and I asked my dad, neither has he. He says that might happen with the non-piano groups.
lanman87 said:
Each local church is elder led.
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There is a group of Elders and a Board, they hire and fire the ministers.
lanman87 said:
Each local church is completely independent from each other. They don’t have associations or conferences.
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Annual Convention https://www.gotonacc.org/
lanman87 said:
They will not use the word trinity, because it is not in the Bible.
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Maybe in the COC/Non music groups, I grew up with the Trinity. We sang “Holy Holy Holy” with as much vigor as the Methodists 🙂
lanman87 said:
Many of them (not all) believe that those not in the church of Christ will not be saved because they are not being obedient to God, which of course, means being obedient to their understanding of God’s commands (or lack of commands).
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The phrase we were taught as children was “We are not the only Christians, we are Christians only.”

It gets confusing when there are three distinct denominations, two of whom reject the term denomination, with different sets of beliefs!!
 
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Hope1960 said:
Some of you know that I’d been considering checking out what I called a “non denominational” church, but now I’m not sure if it’s non denominational. I’m not really sure what non denominational means, exactly.

Anyway, this church is called “(Name of church) Christian Church”, or just “(Name of church) Church”, and the head pastor graduated from Johnson Bible College with a Bachelors in Youth Ministry & Preaching and a Masters in New Testament.

I know I’ve given little information but there really isn’t much information on their website to go on. I know they have Elders who are in charge of the church, rather than a hierarchy like Catholicism. Can anyone tell me what kind of church this might be?
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In my experience “nondenominational” usually means Baptist or Pentecostal.
 
Really? Why don’t they call themselves Baptist or Pentecostal? I mean what’s with the name “non-denominational”?
 
In my experience, people who think “non denominational” means “Pentecostal or Baptist” do not have a firm understanding of either (starting with there are many Pentecostal groups and many Baptist denominations which all have different doctrines).
 
TheLittleLady said:
The phrase we were taught as children was “We are not the only Christians, we are Christians only.”
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Their website says that, with a few word changes.it sayS” We do not consider ourselves to be the only Christians, but stand on the belief that God desires for us to be Christians only.”
 
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Yep, they are likely what I grew up in. They are very very serious young earth Creationists!
 
I couldn’t deal with that and I couldn’t sit for a service where just the sermon alone was 40 -50 minutes long.

In my email, I did ask if they recognize infant Baptism of former Catholics or if they must be re-Baptised,
And if members are free to believe in evolution of the world and body or if they must believe in creationism?
 
My bet is they answer that they recognize “believer’s baptism” and that it does not count below the age of reason. They will also give a big NO to evolution.
 
Hope1960 said:
I couldn’t deal with that and I couldn’t sit for a service where just the sermon alone was 40 -50 minutes long.
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A number of modern non-catholic churches have theatre chairs to help the people with that.
 
What are theater chairs? When I went to their Celebrate Recovery meetings they had just regular cloth, padded chairs to sit in but those were in a different part of the building, not the worship area.
I just couldn’t sit there that long because I couldn’t listen and pay attention for that length of time.
 
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