Confessing a church’s beliefs

A confessional church sounds like a church that just did something bad and is very sorry about it. But a confessional church is actually one that bases its worship, teaching, and preaching on a confession of faith or catechism. Many of the early denominations have a confession of faith that Christians formulated at the time they formed the denomination. In practice, some churches pay close attention to the confession, but others (including many mainline churches) tend to ignore it in modern times.

Confronting the Challenge of Modernism

The original reformers may have intended for the Protestant Reformation to be a religious revolution, but it had ripple effects that eventually impacted all of society and helped bring the end to Christendom (the close relationship between the Church and the government in a particular geographical area). The Reformation was a challenge by God-seeking Christians to the dominant Church authority. However, it also paved the way for people with no religious interests to rebel against a Church authority that they didn’t want. This anti-authority attitude against the Church showed itself most significantly during the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries publicly dispensed of God and the Church in ways that would’ve been unheard of just a couple hundred years before that time. Perhaps the defining moment came when they changed the name of the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the Temple of Reason.

As a result, modernism (the idea of abandoning tradition in favour of new progressive ideas) was born and spread throughout society in the 19^th century and eventually into the churches, as well. Modernism in the Church (or theological liberalism) embraced the principles of the 18th-century Enlightenment, holding a much more optimistic view of human nature than biblical Christians did. The idea of original sin became passé. Through education, humans could become good and create a heaven-on-earth society. When Darwinian evolution came in vogue, some churches accepted naturalism and began discounting the possibilities of miracles. Instead of the authoritative Word of God, modernist churches looked at the Bible merely as an account of humanity’s evolving spiritual understanding and sought to demythologize the scriptures.

Liberal-minded people tended to embrace this secular modernism and moved to change the Church based on that worldview. Fundamentalists fled from modernity, but evangelicals aimed to balance modern thinking without compromising the core beliefs of the Christian faith.

Ordaining women

Although the original apostles were all men, women still played a vital role in the development of the early Church. Women served in various leadership roles in the Church, but they didn’t serve as ordained clergy because of biblical teaching against that practice. Specifically, Paul instructed in 1 Timothy 2:12: “I don’t permit a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over a man.”

Christians who don’t support female pastors say that the issue is straightforward: The Bible teaches against it. They say that Paul’s command still applies to the Church today, in spite of whatever’s going on in society outside the Church. They’re quick to point out that they believe that men and women are equal before God and that women can and should play many key leadership roles in the Church. However, they hold that God has specifically ordained men for public pastoral preaching.

On the other end of the spectrum, Christians in support of female clergy insist that Paul’s words were specific to the Ephesian Church and point out other examples of Paul allowing women to teach (see Acts 18:24-26).

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches don’t permit female clergy, but Protestant denominations remain divided on this issue. Most mainline denominations – such as Episcopalian, United Methodist, Congregational, and some Lutheran – allow women in pastoral positions. Other more conservative denominations and nondenominational churches don’t.

Modernism became the dominant view in several of the larger denominations during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. These mainline denominations include the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, American Baptists, and United Church of Christ (Congregationalists). However, a minority of people within these denominations held more conservative views in line with the original reformers. Sometimes denominations, such as the Presbyterians, formally divided between conservative (Presbyterian Church in America) and liberal (Presbyterian Church USA) groups. Others, such as the Methodists and Episcopalians, housed both conservative and liberal groups within the same denomination, albeit with periodic tensions surfacing as issues arise, such as ordaining homosexual clergy and dealing with women’s rights and social activism issues.

Looking to the Future: Trends in Contemporary Protestantism

As the Protestant Church heads into the 21^st century, it displays some notable trends. These include

Shrinking mainline denominations: Although mainline denominations remain dominant in overall numbers of people, they don’t carry the same influence within Protestantism that they did a century ago and before. As a response to the impact of modernism in mainline denominations, many evangelical and other biblical Christians moved on to more biblically-minded denominations or to nondenominational churches.

Independent, nondenominational churches: More and more new churches that are springing up have no denominational ties to them whatsoever. A combination of the congregation and church leadership govern these independent, nondenominational churches, and they tend to emphasize the core teachings of Protestantism. These churches are usually evangelical.

Seeker-sensitive churches: Seeker-sensitive churches try to reduce the traditional barriers that non-Christians face in coming to a church and actively becoming a part of it. They focus on the needs of the “seekers,” ensuring that the church offers ministries and a worship experience that’s relevant to them. See Chapter 12 for more on seeker-sensitive churches.

Cell group churches: As churches get larger and larger in number, Christians often struggle with feeling a connection to the Body of Christ. If left unchecked, church simply becomes a place you go to for an hour a week and worship with hundreds or thousands of others you don’t know. The cell group concept developed as a response to this problem. In the biological world, an organism consists of many, many cells. In the same way, a church is a single local Body of Christ and meets together as a church body to worship, but it should also be divided up into small cell groups to meet people’s needs outside of worship. Cell groups may be Bible studies, grief counselling groups, divorce support groups, or even as specific as classic movie cell groups (which serves to give Christians a chance to fellowship with each other and enjoy a common activity). Supporters of cell groups say that this concept enables larger churches to remain in line with the concept of the New Testament group of believers meeting together and loving one another.

Megachurches: In some of the larger population areas of the U.S. and other countries, large churches are springing up. And I’m talking large – with sometimes tens of thousands of members. In America, a megachurch is typically nondenominational, provides contemporary worship (see Chapter 12) in a large auditorium, and usually has a professional feel to the worship experience – a high calibre worship music team, first class actors in dramas and skits, the incorporation of multimedia, and a preacher with plenty of charm and personality. Willow Creek in suburban Chicago, Saddle Back Community Church in southern California, and Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles (one of the largest African American congregations) are three of the best-know megachurches in the U.S. Many U.S. megachurches are also seeker-sensitive and use cell group techniques for their congregations.

Although most megachurches are located in the U.S., the world’s largest megachurch, Yoida Full Gospel Church, resides in Seoul, South Korea, with 800,000 members.