Chapter 9 in my book, Close Your Church for Good, is called “Discard your Doctrinal Statements.” In it, I explore the idea that doctrinal statements, while helpful in many ways, have harmed the Gospel, and hindered the spread of the Kingdom of God. To live and practice the way of love as modelled by Jesus, one step we can take is to get rid of our doctrinal statements, which divide and condemn, rather than invite and forgive.
Please note that due to some of the feedback I receive on these posts, this chapter might be radically revised for the final edition of the book. These changes will only be available in the print or eBook version when it comes out.
Here are the blog posts that come from this chapter:
- War of the Words
- When I got Burned at the Stake
- History of Doctrinal Statements
- Problems with Doctrinal Statements
- Judging Jesus
- Can We Lock Others out of Heaven?
- Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven
- How Peter Used the Keys of the Kingdom
- Jesus Condemns Religious People
- Judging, Keep it in the Family
- Hand This Man Over to Satan
- Killing Others for Christ
- Creeds Kill
- When Killing was Okay
- How Christians Kill Others
- Christian Jihad
- How to Kill the Church
- Getting the Gospel Wrong
- Gutting the Gospel
- Benefits of Doctrinal Statements
- A Better Way than Doctrine
- How to Handle Heresy
- Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
- No Protection is 100% Reliable
- The Heresy Myth
- The Heresy of Heretics
- The Charge of Heresy
- Beware of False Teachers
- Denying the Lord who Bought Them
- Truth and Love of Jesus
To read the content of any other chapters, check out the post which contains the Table of Contents to Close Your Church for Good.
Looking forward to reading your book!
Swanny
Me too!
🙂
I struggle with organized churches. Just too organized
then just think! If we did discard our doctrinal statement, and the Mormons discarded theirs, we could worship together in love and not be divided.
How wonderful would that be!
I mean, certainly our respective doctrinal statements do, indeed, “divide and condemn”. And, after all, the Mormons probably GENERALLY live a life more like Jesus lived His than we do. They “have to”, because they base their salvation on works, not on grace. But let’s not get muddled in the facts of “what we believe”. Let’s just “invite” and “forgive”. I can easily “forgive” a Mormon for not understanding what their church teaches (oops! does that mean they have a doctrinal statement written somewhere??) , BUT it’s NOT possible for God, through Jesus, to “forgive” a Mormon who not only understands their doctrine (rats! there goes those darn doctrinal statements popping up their divisive and condemning heads again!), but embraces it as truth. A Mormon who truly embraces their teaching will NOT be in heaven, therefore, is NOT “forgiven” by God. That doesn’t mean I can’t be friends with them, but it DOES MEAN I HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO TELL THEM WHERE THEIR TEACHING IS IN ERROR and at odds with the Bible. I have a responsibility to “invite” them to the truth, according to the DOCTRINAL STATEMENT OF THE BIBLE, not according to Joseph Smith. But it divides us, certainly. Truth and lies.
Seriously, Jeremy, I’m so amazed at how you talk in circles and sometimes say the dumbest things. I do love you very very much. But in love, I want to tell you that you’re missing some pretty key points of the basic Christian walk.
Mom,
I think this is your very first comment ever on my blog! And it’s a doosey! But that’s okay.
I think you will find that as the series progresses, I am not so far off base as you suppose. I hope you will be able to see that this isn’t one of the dumbest things I have ever said, but it might actually be those who demand and require doctrinal statements who are missing some pretty key points of the basic Christian walk.
You see, I have actual experience of being involved in a church where Mormons, Buddhists, Atheists,and others were actively participating. It wasn’t a “Universalist” church, but was part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I saw God more active there than in any other church I have ever visited, and experienced the love of Jesus and the Body of Christ in tangible ways. Yes, this church had a doctrinal statement, but with what I am envisioning, they just as easily could have functioned without it.
How? Well, that is the purpose of this series. I hope you keep reading!
I always thought doctrinal statements caused division.But at the same time, it lets me know what an organization believes. Do they lean towards the evangelical side? Or are they liberal? They ALL say they follow the bible, but like the Mishnah says “If there aren’t 3 interpretations of a passage, you didn’t really read it”
I’ve been on a Mishnah kick lately. I just finished with Mishnah Berakoth.
But I believe thatndoc. statements just divide.
You are reading the Mishnah? I tried before. It is tough reading….
Yes, I like doctrinal statements also, and often check those out on a church or ministry website.
But in recent years, I have begun looking at something else, which I think displays the soundness of a church or ministry better than doctrinal statements. I’ll explain more in future posts.
With out our Doctrine, we have no Christian faith. thanks goodness for the Holy Spirit that gave the inspiration to the Apostles to pen what we hold in our hands today. the Word of God, yayyy!!
Vaughn,
You are absolutely right, and although the title of this post may seem shocking, I am not suggesting we give up our doctrine, or abandon the Scriptures. I just have a different approach to holding to it. You’ll see what I mean as the series progresses.
“I think this is your very first comment ever on my blog! And it’s a doosey! But that’s okay.” LOVE IT!!! you’ve got to give that woman credit for being passionate! your blogs certainly spark great discussions between andy and i, i’ll give you that jeremy! as far as this blog post, i’m certainly looking forward to more blog posts on this subject. i don’t think you’ve come out and said enough either way for me to really know what you’re getting at…but that’s what keeps me on the line! 🙂
I think I understand Jeremy.. what I found that now that we only meet Sunday morning in a home with a core group of folks that worship differently and yet still study scripture how it relates to today and etc… when I share the Gospel to people it is the Good news of what Christ has done for them and what those folks can gain by His Death and His promise of eternal life which is – through faith in Him. The whole doctrine.. is never discussed with them, it is not something that is important at the moment. But on the other hand if the person hearing the Gospel is religious, hmm then maybe some doctrine is mentioned but the doctrine is to me never associated with a church or denomination, it is the doctrine of Gods Words as it relates to today in say like our dispensation which I never mention that word either. It is not about a church building or churches but about the church of God – Gods adopted people through faith in Christ.
You said what I meant! That’s EXACTLY how I feel. If a Mormon wanted to come in and worship, praise God. Living in an organic life, where you’re in each other’s lives, you CAN’T hide or have some weird doctrine that will caused the local church to stumble. Plus, if the church is newly planted, you CAN’T have a “doctrine”, because you’re learning together. You don’t know what you believe yet! We can do individually everything the church does, but it takes a LOT longer.If there is no one there to “watch” my back so to speak, I may be praying to Mary thinking it’s OK.Millions do it everyday! But let’s say I never knew people would do such a thing. You pull out your bible, I pull out mine and we try to seek each other’s view point, and find something completely new in the process. That’s what could NEVER happen as clergy. I was in the position as “already there”, and if I were to ever open up, they would think I was off my rocker! One thing the Assembly of God taught me was accountability. Each church was autonomous, but there was an elected presbyter. Any pastor in the district could be voted on as the presbyter. But we had monthly “agape meetings” where we would break bread and have accountability, that was usually at the presbyter’s house. If it was a big district (like the my first district in Long Island) we had 150 full time ministers, and that was after they split the district 10 years ago) So it had to be at his church. It was CLOSE to what everyone should be doing, not a special elite only. Also , to be fully ordained in the Assemblies, you had to be a licensed senior pastor for 3 yrs w/o blemish.So in the “world” I’m ordained, but within AG itself I was only licensed. Weird, huh? OK..no more diarrhea of the keyboard.
Just to clarify, our polity was basically Wesleyan Methodist.
Anthony,
I do not have as much experience with Organic church as you do, or as many others do, such as Frank Viola or Neil Cole or Felicity Dale, and so might defer to them on this. I do think that Organic churches might degenerate into endless theological debates if we are not careful, and so would love to see what they have written on the subject. Are you aware of anything they have written?
Hmm..I’ve thought of that myself. Frank is for the most part always talking about churches with all new Christians. He’s never spoken about ones (as far as I know) with Christyians all coming in from different denominations. When I was in Germany they had a Catholic, an evangelical and some Lutherans. I don’t know their history, but they did it.
Vaughn,
You pretty much just summarized what I going to write. Yes, theology and doctrine is important, but in a different way than used by many churches to keep people out, and keep them “in line.”
I agree, the Creeds have become like doctrine, as a reference to support or clarify scripture.. well I don’t know..!!
I recently read a book which said that the creeds were also inspired, in a similar manner as Scripture.
Marianne Wiest I am glad the posts spark discussion. That is partly the goal. In today’s blogging world, you have to be somewhat provocative to garner attention… As I mentioned above, I do believe in the value of doctrinal statements, but in a much different way than how they are used by most churches. I will try to make this clear as the series progresses.
Some years ago I heard the lead theologian of a denomination describe doctrinal statements as those statements which define the “doctrinal distinctiveness” of the particular denomination. Perhaps that is sometimes the intention of those who write and provide such statements. Yet there are inherent problems with such statements.
As you point out, such statements tend to divide. For example, if a denomination declared in their doctrinal statement that the Bible teaches that all good Christians must wear pink hats and only those people who wear pink hats can indeed be true followers of Jesus, we would conclude upon reading this statement that we would never be accepted by those folks because we don’t agree with this bit of ridiculous theology.
Also, in my experience, every group has what I call their “insiders theology” which is rarely, if ever, included in the doctrinal statement. One must become part of the group to discover these beliefs. Here are just three examples I have observed in groups of which I have been a part:
* Those who give the most money to the church are the best Christians (I actually have heard this said in board meetings.)
* Although the doctrinal statement says that only men may be elders (and makes no other reference even indirectly to what women may or may not do), in practice women may not do anything other than lead women or small children. They may not lead men in any way and may not speak to any group if any men or older boys are present.
* Although the doctrinal statement and other statements of the church may indicate that everyone is welcome to attend, that is often not the case. Those who are obviously LGBT, homeless, poor, disagree with the pastor and so on are shunned and must be very thick skinned or socially ignorant to continue attending.
Sam those are good points. And of COURSE the biggest tither gets the most perks. They keep the church around 🙂 When I was the Asst. Pastor at Freedom Chapel in Long Island, our biggest tither was a divorce lawyer who was married 4 times and 2 of them while being a board member! If he were to leave, we would have lost a lot! We had “Freedom Brunch” after the 2nd service every Sunday where we served catered breakfasts,(waffles, toast, jam the whole bit for 300 people) and enough Entemman’s to choke a mule. It was about $800 every Sunday. And the lawyer paid for it all, and we had to announced it was graciously provided by Leonard BlahBlah. So then everyone felt the need to individually thank him. I felt so slimey. (We need divorce lawyers I guess to protect the defendant, but all in all we don’t need them )
Did he make you announce it was provided by him, or he wouldn’t foot the bill?
so here’s a question. Why do churches keep out LGBT people, but not divorce lawyers? Ha!
Well, it was heavily implied at the board meetings that he’d like the announcement. Since he was Jewish, he could throw on the Jewish guilt 🙂 He wanted us to add a plug for his practice too! At least the Sr. Pastor had enough sense to refuse that one!
Sam,
Wow. What a great comment! I wish more people were reading over at http://www.GraceGround.com.
I like this idea of “insider theology.” It is pervasive in churches.
It sounds like the Freemasons. I have no experience with the “insider theology”. Maybe it’s more common in the mainline churches.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. – John 1.1
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you”. – John 14.26
Putting the book at first place is idolatry. Putting any personal statement in the letters over the words of Jesus to underline a personal opinion about truth is the wrong chronology. In best case, a pretty self-centered attitude. It just is not true, that the Bible is the word of God. Jesus is the very word and always has been. The Holy Spirit took over responsibility to reveal the deep meaning of what he said and is saying today. Not a pastor, not a fence, not a book not me, not you. But we can be of help, hopefully.
There are many more witnesses in the book, if you desperately need it as a source. All are referring to a spirit, who will be poured out on ANY flesh to show God’s grace as a key to make people to do their u-turn. And as much as a single person is willing to hear it, this spirit gives insights through the book, the lord-of-the-rings movie, the new-age-movement… whatever he wants. He never respects church boundaries and personal last-lines-of-theological-defense.
If this sound heretical you got the reason, why Jesus was killed. He wasn’t into fences either.