Denominationalism

While the local church is an organization, Jesus never set up any other organizational structure in His church. We look in this lesson at some ways in which some attempt to justify the existence of these denominational organizations and see why these justifications do not work.

In God’s church, there are no true creeds. However, in the mind of individuals or groups of Christians, there may be some thinking that is similar to that of creeds (putting faith in some kind of statement of faith rather than in Christ Himself). In this class we look at some ways in which we personally may display this kind of thinking if we are not careful.

What is a creed and why are they are a problem? Is the only problem with creeds that they sometimes contain false teaching or is there a deeper problem than that? That is what we look at in this class.

While the full idea of clergy can never be in the Lord’s church, some of the concepts that go along with it can easily find their way into our own thinking and practices if we are not watchful. In this lesson, we take a look at some ways we can find these wrong ideas coming in.

When we look at the idea of clergy, we must notice that there are those who are appointed within the Lord’s church to various work. What is the difference between this and a denomination ordaining someone to a position? How can the church maintain integrity among those in positions of influence without a governing body over them? We look at some of these ideas in this lesson.

Is there such a thing as clergy or laity in the Lord’s church? What do these ideas even mean? Who has authority to determine roles within the church and who has authority to appoint them? We begin looking at some of these ideas in this lesson.

In this class, we focus on the name of the church and demonstrate that there is no title given by God to the church. We also see that “name” often means something a bit different in biblical usage than in the way we often think about the word.

In the previous class, we looked at how Jesus organized His church. In this class, we want to contrast this with how men organize their churches or denominations.

In this introduction to a series on denominationalism, we look at how Christ’s church is supposed to be organized. When we see how Jesus designed it, we can begin seeing the huge problems with denominational structures and thinking.