Why are there so many alternatives, choices, or "brand names" when it comes to finding a church home? Roman Catholic, Lutheran Episcopalian, Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Pentecostal, so-called "non-denominational," etc. What gives? Well, in the end of the day there are only a few major brands, but then among those brands there are splits over things as simple as carpet color or as big as Communion practice. There is also the "fringe" churches which show up from seemingly nowhere. The pop up almost weekly, and then disappear. Then there's the TV churches like the "faith healers" and the fast-talking, feel-good preachers, and all those self-proclaimed prophets and apostles and bishops all claiming to have signs and wonders to share...for just a love offering of $30 or more. It's very perplexing, isn't it?
No, it should not. Finding a church home should be as simple as going to the church closest to your family, joining, and celebrating Christ and His cross. Unfortunately, the American church experience is anything but simple. Of course, how you go about finding your church home, this matters too. It's really not a reflection of true discernment if you just look for a church that makes you feel good, has friendly people, uplifting music, etc. Christianity is more than feelings, after all, and starting your search with your emotions leads to trouble in most matters, including church. But it's also not good to make it purely about reason. If your discernment is strictly about growth patterns, types and number of ministries, a church's financial condition, the quality of the building, the number of staff, etc. then you are letting your own thinking get in the way. Fact is that church bodies know that most people choose their churches by emotions or reason, and they literally market their churches accordingly. This is a product of living in a very consumerist society where "have it your way" is the nation's motto. Churches want people, so they offer a "have it your way" Christianity. It makes sense...it's very wrong...but it make sense.
One of the great things about living in the United States is the old Latin concept of caveat emptor. LET THE BUYER BEWARE! As a child of God, it is your job to discern. Discern what, you ask? To discern the "spirits," as John writes in 1 John 4:1. " Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." John doesn't say that only a few false prophets are about that are easily avoidable. But he says that many false prophets have gone out and that testing (discernment) is required to know the difference between the true and false prophets. But who cares, right? If even the false prophet gets the basics right, isn't that better than not going to church at all? Or maybe you think that, because of all the division, it's best to just avoid church as much as possible and worship the Lord in your own way. But no, because the Scripture teaches us that we are not to "forsake the fellowship"? (Hebrews 10:24-25) because doing so leads to a shipwrecked faith, and what good is a shipwrecked faith? Instead Christians are called to discern the teachings, to test the teachings of a particular church against the Scripture. "But don't all churches teach essentially the same things?" Absolutely not! If all churches taught the same things, there would be no division. The fact is that church bodies each teach differently about a whole lot of things because of how they read and interpret the Scripture. And some churches don't even consider what the Scripture says at all. A few don't even confess Christ. And if you aren't sure about what is what when it comes to the differences, caveat emptor ! BEWARE! You could be led astray by a false church or false teacher. And since this is about your eternal soul, you should be at least as discerning about your church home as you are a car purchase, a clothing purchase, or a new phone purchase!
We believe that to agree about the Gospel is more than agreeing to some generalities concerning Jesus or the Bible. There is no such thing as a “generic” Christianity.
The late Reverend Paul T. McCain
Much of western or American Christianity today is quite generic in nature. What this means is that, apart from some vague confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior, not much else is believed or confessed. But the Word of our Lord has very specific teachings (doctrines) that each Christian is called by God to believe. What you believe about Baptism isn't up for grabs. What you believe about the Lord's Supper isn't up to each individual to decide for him or herself. The Lord says, "This is what I expect you to believe." But because of the western draw for tolerance and just "getting alone," many Christians have compromised horribly a right confession of faith, putting creature comforts, personal likes and dislikes, ambiance, style, and emotions ahead of sound teaching and bold confession. This has caused the church great harm and led to great weakness in America. We're too frightened to "say something wrong" or "hurt someone's feelings," so we don't speak, and we don't put the time into discerning between the spirits, testing by the Word of God what is true and what is false, heresy, or heterodoxy. This must change, and all American Christians must repent of this attitude of indifference or unwillingness to discern.
One caveat however. Please understand that I am looking at all this from a confessional Lutheran point of view. I am not ashamed to say this, however. This is not a heart or head thing, a "feeling" or "intellectual" thing for me. I believe (have faith) that what we teach as confessional Lutherans is true to the Scripture, and we do not add to or delete anything. If you are willing to take doctrine seriously, then I am willing to discuss these things with you. Granted, the Lutheran church is not perfect and there are many things of which we must repent, but our doctrine is not one of them. And you can test us on this, and we encourage and challenge you to "discern" our doctrine to the fullest! So, to help you, here are some discernful questions and some do's and don'ts. If you are serious about finding a church home that is faithful to the Word of God and rightly teaches Christ, this is a great place to start.
This is fundamental to the one true Christian faith. A rejection of the Trinity is a rejection of the one true God and no salvation is found in such a church or church body. What churches reject Trinitarian theology?
Many churches deny the sinful nature. A denial of the sinful nature distorts the salvation of Christ. The denial of the sinful nature is an ancient heresy known as Pelagianism and their teaching is more about self-improvement. What churches deny the sinful nature?
Here is where confessional Lutheranism shines, but where some churches start to really go off the rails. We are saved by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. For Lutherans, this means precisely what it says. Here are some churches that aren't consistent.
It's very easy to confound the Law and the Gospel or turn the Gospel into a new Law. Far too many churches fall into this snare due to lack of study, discernment, and proper training. You typically find a lack of Law in liberation/liberal churches...
There are also churches that preach the Gospel as a new Law. These are called Pietist churches and may include...
No one likes an overly pushy church where everyone is aggressively friendly or seems computer programmed to "bait and switch" every visitor. Sometimes friendliness and being welcoming becomes an idol such that doctrine is compromised just to get people in the door. Statements likes, "Doctrine divides, but the Bible unites," or "We all basically believe the same thing," is said out of ignorance or the person saying it is a liar. Substance matters. There are also some churches that close themselves off to outsiders. A lack of love is as bad or worse than a fake love. We discover such a church in Revelation 2:1-7, the Ephesian church. They had pure doctrine, but they were so zealous that in holding pure doctrine, they abandoned the love they had for Christ and one another. There must be a balance between sound doctrine and practice and love.
Do you see how churches are not all the same? Even among the main doctrines (articles) of the Christian faith, some churches have went their own way and abandoned orthodox (faithful to the Scripture) teachings. Yet, these churches are loved and attended by millions. Scary to think! But it takes us right back to discernment. These are matters of eternal life and should be taken seriously.
I think it proper to talk about another approach that some churches have taken when it comes to doctrine. They've come up with a way to divide between "major" and "minor" or "essential" and "non-essential" doctrines, as a way to minimize division and work for common unity. The problem with this approach is that it assumes parts of the Bible are less important than others. This is quite troubling. After all, who decides what is essential and what is not essential? The pastor? A voting body? A university professor or author? Now, there are doctrines or articles which are necessary to believe for salvation such as the Trinity, the Two Natures of Christ, the Atonement, etc. But these articles which must be believed for salvation do not make other articles unimportant. Everything that we believe, teach, and confess as Christians should be faithful to the Word of God because God is not divided. This is why Jesus tells us to teach everything He has commanded (Matthew 28:19ff) and why Paul says that all Scripture is breathed out by God and to be used for teaching, rebuking, exhorting, etc. Nothing is "non-essential" or "minor."
Here is a list of a few more things to consider as you discern and wrap up your church shopping for today.
Different churches number sacraments differently, and many churches, especially in America, do not have Sacraments at all. It is worth looking at early American history to learn why this is.
Absolution is another doctrine that many American churches reject outright. They say, "Only God can forgive sins," and conclude that any pastor or person who says, "I forgive you" is sinning against the Lord. However, in Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18, and John 20:22-23, as well as throughout the Epistles, the authority to forgive sins is clearly given to the church and her ministers. But again, this dates back to a time in early American church history and even into the 1600's where, out of pure reaction against the Roman Catholic church, many new church bodies formed rejecting Sacraments and Absolution.
Another doctrine that seems to have made great strides in American Christianity has to do with Eschatology or Last Things. As with the Sacraments and Soteriology, the church held to a particular view for most of her history, that is until someone in the modern era came along and rejected it all and started a whole new teaching. Millennialism, the notion that Christ will reign on earth for a literal 1,000 years, comes to us from a man named John Darby. Darby lived in the 1800's. During his life he wrote a version of the Scripture called the Darby Bible, and he came up with a new understanding of the Eschaton. He taught that the 1,000 years in Revelation 20:1-6 is meant to be taken literally, that Christ would reestablish an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem, that the temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt, and that a literal reading of Revelation is preferred over the traditional reading (as an apocalyptic text). He taught that all the prophecies in Revelation (and some of the prophecies in Daniel and Ezekiel) were futuristic (they have yet to be fulfilled). He also taught that the Jews or nation of Israel would still be saved, but by a different dispensation than that of the rest of the world (they don't need to believe in Jesus to be saved; God will save them differently).
American Evangelical churches bought into Darbism with little push back, and since then many of the TV evangelists have added more to his teaching. Some have taken advantage of the Millennial view, drawing their people's attention to natural disasters, various wars, events in Israel, etc. as signs of the Lord's coming, and making a lot of money off it all. Herbert and James Armstrong were huge believers in Premillennial Dispensational teaching and, for years, ran a television program where they explained the Book of Revelation using very graphic and scary drawings. I remember watching this when I was a kid.
Lutherans are not Premillennial. We instead embrace the historic/orthodox teaching of Amillennialism. We believe Revelation is to be read as the people long ago would have received and read it. They understood the symbols and numbers and it was all meaningful for them in their context. The Roman Empire was out and about persecuting Christians. There were false teachers and false Gnostic religions popping up all over the place tempting Christians to abandon orthodoxy and seek after false teachings. There were endless martyrdoms, Christian families suffered from famine and sickness. John wrote his apocalypse to those seven churches in Asia Minor to comfort them, exhort them to good works, warn them of apostasy, and assure them of the Lord's return to bring His people home to paradise.
Here at St. Paul's we offer a 6-8 week new member class where we delve into the Augsburg Confession, and learn a bit about church history, and the history of the LCMS. You are welcome and encouraged to ask questions, lots of questions. After the class, you are invited to join the congregation. While visiting or going through the new member class, you will not be served the Lord's Supper. St. Paul's is Closed Communion. This offends a lot of people these days, but it was not always like this. Closed Communion was the universal practice of every Christian church for centuries. It's only recently that people have taken offense but this is because of American individualism and a rejection of absolute truth, and not because it is unloving or unbiblical. Quite the contrary. Closed Communion is the most loving practice there is, and it is based on the Scripture. Time will be spent in new member class concerning this matter.
Watch Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller's video on the Biblical precedence of Closed Communion and why all Christians and churches should practice it.
St. Paul's Lutheran Church believes and teaches that the Lord gives us His true body and blood in the bread and wine served in the Lord's Supper for the forgiveness of sins and to strength our union with Him and one another. Our Lord invites to His table those who trust His words: this is my body, this is my blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins, who repent of all sin, and who set aside any refusal to forgive and love others as He forgives. Because those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner do so to their great harm, and who are not yet instructed, in doubt, or who hold a belief differing from this congregation and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and yet desire to receive the Sacrament, are asked to speak with the pastor or an elder. St. Paul's Lutheran Church is a Closed Communion church body.
