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Reinventing the denomination

Imagine it was your job to reinvent the denomination. Imagine all associations, state conventions, national agencies, and all other denominational components vanished. You are meeting in a room with a dozen national leaders. Your job is to reinvent the denomination.

Some would wonder if it even needs to be done. Maybe denominations are a thing of the past and should just quietly die. Why do we need denominations, anyway? There are at least two reasons.

The first reason is that there are things we can do together that we can never do as individual churches. We can do missions better together than any of us can do alone. Very few churches could run a seminary, but a denomination can. I have often trained Sunday School workers in the context of an association. Here is a situation where a number of smaller churches would all like to have their Sunday School workers trained. None of them have the resources to fly an outside speaker in. Together they can do what none of them can do alone.

Of course, the larger the church, the less true this is. Larger churches can do training that smaller churches can only do if they cooperate with each other. But, unless you are John MacArthur’s church, it’s not likely you can run a seminary. Very few churches would be able to run a global missions organization. There are things that we can do together that we cannot do alone.

But, there is a more basic reason for denomination. It has to do with fellowship. I see denominational entities—particularly associations—work best in a rural context. In a rural context it is impossible for any church to get very large. Consequently, it is common to have a number of churches that are all in similar situations. They all minister in small towns in a particular part of the country. The pastors—and often the people—are hungry for fellowship. They love getting together and seeing their fellow pastor friends. They love participating in a big event that is bigger than any of them will ever see in their own local church.

In the city things are quite different. There are big churches and small. There are inner city churches and churches in the suburbs. There are churches with various ethnic makeups. Often, these churches are so different and they struggle to fellowship.

Fellowship has to do with having something in common. The Greek word for fellowship, koine, actually means “common.” The more we have in common the easier it is to fellowship. Of course, the most important thing we have in common is Christ. And, the more central He is in our life the easier it is to fellowship with people with whom we have Christ in common, though little else.

I remember visiting in a prison one time in the Philippines. There were a group of hardened criminals who were imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government. In their past life, they had been very mean men. They were murderers, thieves, and anarchists. God got ahold of their lives. They became thoroughgoing Christians and evangelists. You could say they were the elder team of the church inside this prison. Now, you wouldn’t think that I would have a lot in common with men like these, and I did not. But we had one important thing in common that superseded all else—Christ. We spent some wonderfully rich time in fellowship together.

We can fellowship with people with whom we have nothing in common except Christ. But, it is easier to fellowship with people with whom we have a lot of other things in common as well. Pastors’ fellowship works best among pastors whose churches are of similar size, and similar makeup. The pastor of the church of 2000 does not always fellowship as well with the pastor of the church of 80. They just live in different worlds. Further, pastors who love Rick Warren tend to not fellowship with pastors who hate Rick Warren.