Nondenominational churches are the single fastest-growing Christian affiliation in the U.S. I regularly talk to believers who tell me their church isn’t a part of any denomination. Often, that comes with a hint of smugness, as if they are the ones truly being faithful to Scripture while the rest of us are in bondage to the traditions of man.
In what follows, I want to offer a defense of denominations, even if it is only two and a half cheers. I’m leaving the term undefined because I realize not every theological conviction will fit with the same level of structure and connection. I also realize that not all of these critiques will apply equally to all nondenominational churches. My main concern is to highlight why I value being part of a national body rather than just doing church on my own.
Theological Transparency
No individual or church simply “believes what the Bible says.” Every one of us engages in an act of interpretation when we read Scripture. We are shaped by our fallibility and sin and limitedness. We are also shaped by the community of people around us. We learn to read Scripture from influential pastors, seminary professors, or that guy we had in a college Bible study. They learned from others as well, and those people together form a tradition that inevitably affects how we understand the Bible.
The broad traditions within Christianity exist because there are questions that are key to our life together as Christians which we disagree about. How should the church be structured and governed? How do we think about the special role of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (and maybe other things too)? Who is a member of our church? How, broadly, do we understand Scripture’s shape? Christians read the Bible and reach different conclusions about those issues, and it is very hard to agree to disagree about those things while still doing life together.
Nondenominational churches inevitably have conclusions on these topics that place them in certain theological traditions. Indeed, it is a running joke in some circles that when a church says they are nondenominational, they’re really saying they’re either Baptist or charismatic and just trying to hide it. Such churches aren’t more theologically inclusive; they’re just less clear about their convictions. They are the neighbor who always votes Republican (or Democrat) and gives to Republican causes and has Republican yard signs but insists that they’re an open-minded independent. What’s worse, by pretending they don’t have convictions and “just teach the Bible,” they encourage a kind of arrogance that assumes they and they only have opinions of equal authority with God’s Word.
I think a much healthier approach is clarity with charity. We should be clear about our convictions and the broad theological categories they land us in. I’m happy to use terms like “Reformed” or “Presbyterian” to describe my theological opinions, not because I’m celebrating some man-made tradition but because I think the Bible teaches stuff that puts me in that camp. You might disagree, and that’s fine. Being up front about our differences allows us to recognize where we are united and have friendly and clarifying debates about the jumping-off points. Transparency makes room for grace; obfuscation inhibits it.
Connectionalism & Accountability
It is always interesting to tell people that I’m a pastor. It evokes a wide range of responses, from curiosity to hostility to uncomfortable, immediate confessions of deep sins I definitely wasn’t curious about. But one of the responses I get regularly is, “How does somebody become a pastor?” I’ve realized, fielding that query numerous times, that the person usually isn’t asking about my educational choices or even my personal calling. They are curious about what that term means, because it can mean a range of things.
I know people who have decided they are pastors simply because they felt some personal unction of the Holy Spirit driving them to it. Sometimes it just means they paid for an ordination on the internet. For many others, being a pastor means that a religious organization chose to hire you and give you that job title.
I appreciate the fact that I’m part of a denominational world where the term “pastor” means something deeper, something connected to the broader church. I was examined by the broader church. I was set apart in ordination by them. We, as churches, are in mutual submission to each other. And, most importantly, I am accountable to that broader church for what I do and say. If I err, I fully expect to be corrected, and if I go totally off the rails, they will make it so I’m not a pastor anymore.
Scripture gives authority to the leaders of the church, but authority always comes with accountability. One of the biggest struggles for truly independent, nondenominational churches is how to provide real accountability to their leaders. Sure, the congregation might have the right to vote on certain things. But the leaders have the microphone and congregational trust—and in abusive situations they can also use church discipline and spiritual power—to forward their agenda. What sort of intra-congregational structure can serve as a check on all of that?
I am grateful for the fact that I am under authority, even as I recognize that I also have authority myself. Denominational accountability is never perfect. Far from it. There will be miscarriages of justice and sin and limits on what it can do. Even functioning at its best, it will only be able to address the worst situations. But it is nonetheless far, far better than nothing. An imperfect accountability system is vastly better than everyone doing what is right in their own eyes.
Maximizing Unity
I often hear nondenominational brothers and sisters talk about denominations as if they are the source of divisions in the church. Certainly, the church is divided, in both tragic and unavoidable ways. Some divisions are the product of sin and selfishness. Others are temporary but necessary because of disagreements about Scripture and practice. While the church still shares a spiritual unity, it is institutionally split, and we should rightly long to see it more unified than it is.
The thing that puzzles me is the way many people think that by leaving any larger denomination or affiliation group they are somehow helping to increase the unity of the church. If your family is divided, disowning everybody isn’t going to make it more united. The same is true for the family of God. There is a real sense in which every nondenominational church is just a single-congregation denomination. We aren’t decreasing divisions when they form; we are multiplying them.
Last year, my wife and I were at our denomination’s annual meeting together. It was her first time going. We enjoyed the worship nights, especially the final evening, which was led by a group of Korean-language churches in that area (my denomination has a disproportionately large Korean/Asian population). The singing and preaching and prayer were bilingual, and it felt like joining in worship with a group of believers I otherwise wouldn’t have access to. What was beautiful to me, though, isn’t just that those Christians exist or that I got to go to a service with them. It is that, for the last two days, I was also debating and wrestling, voting with and mutually submitting to them. We were part of the same body, united not just in the Holy Spirit but also in the shepherding of the church.
Obviously, the half a million members of my denomination are a tiny slice of the kingdom of heaven, and far less diverse than we will be one day in glory. Every Christian should long to see that unity grow. But what I’m saying is this: If we long for the unity of the church to increase, every local church should seek to be as connected and accountable as possible to the broader people of God. Absolutely, there are good reasons for division. We shouldn’t violate our consciences or convictions about God’s Word. Individual churches, even in good denominations, might go astray in all kinds of ways that warrant leaving. But the individualism and micro-tribalism of the other extreme are equally sinful.
Conclusion
I could multiply the reasons I think denominations matter. They are wonderful spaces for cooperation in ministry and missions. They are deeply humbling structures, fighting back against the plague of celebrity pastors besetting churches. They are spaces of public witness. There are many reasons to be grateful.
But for now, I’ll just leave it here: Part of why I’ve been pondering this topic is because I just got back from our annual denominational meeting. Some of my friends groan about this meeting because it is awkward and inefficient. There are times it is tense, and there are individuals who do and say bone-headed things. Worst of all, many of them aren’t even on the other side!
But as I sat with two thousand other pastors and elders and saw the work of the church get done, despite my occasional irritation and boredom, the main thing I felt was appreciation. This is a hard thing, living in unity, especially when some of us have vastly different cultural and political convictions. We aren’t doing it perfectly. But especially in our divided age, it seems even more worth doing than ever before. Here were a group of people who would never gather except for our love for Jesus and commitment to serving His church, figuring it out together in reliance on the Holy Spirit. May such work of the church never cease.
(originally published at Eric Tonjes's blog)
