Identity Crisis in the Churches of Christ?

For the past several years many writers in our fellowship have been claiming that the churches of Christ are experiencing an "identity crisis." A recent Christian Chronicle article explored this issue. The claim is made that the average member of the church no longer has confidence in what we stand for and what makes us distinctive from denominational groups.

It seems to me that there is a degree of truth to the claim that we are facing an identity crisis, but for reasons that few have realized. There seems to be at least two major groups within our congregations struggling for identity.

The first group are those postmoderns who are embarrassed by the reputation of our past. Desiring to be more palatable to the so-called, "greater Christian community" these identity seekers desire that churches of Christ attain denominational status and join the ecumenical/evangelical community. Agreeing to disagree over doctrine is not the solution. God is displeased when we divide rather than being united upon the teaching of Scripture (cf. John 17:17; 1 Cor. 1:10). The churches of Christ are heirs of the Restoration Movement, a Biblical concept to avoid the divisions of denominationalism and be simple New Testament Christians. We must not abandon this major tenet of our identity--for our identity is that we be Christians, nothing more and nothing less.

However, the second group is comprised of traditionalists among us whose real desire seems to be to Restore the nostalgia of the 1950's Church of Christ. Some people seem to think that if it is "old" it must be right, and if it is "new" it must be wrong. God's message must never change, but we must continually be changing our methods to be effective in reaching the world. The identity of the Lord's church does not rest with what the "churches of Christ in the 1950's" looked like. The identity of the church is found in God's design and instructions for her as found in the pages of the New Testament. Unfortunately, when times change some people are so unfamiliar with Scripture that "tradition" is their safety net. "I know what we have been doing is right," one might ponder, "therefore we will just keep doing that." If our identity is determined by tradition, we may find ourselves quickly irrelevant and dying in our contemporary culture. Our identity is not based on what "the church of my grandfather" looked like; rather our identity if found in the instructions of what the New Testament church looked like.

We must return to Scripture for our identity. We must work hard to avoid looking at Scripture through 1950's glasses, or 2008 glasses. We must simply go back and let the text plainly speak. If the description of what I find in Scripture looks nothing like what the church is doing today, I must be ready to change...even if it hurts a little (for example look at 1 Timothy 2:8!) We must stop "explaining away" passages because we have not done what the text says. Let's evaluate everything we do, and everything we are, through the lens of Scripture. May we all strive to honestly read the text of Scripture and be ready to go wherever it takes us. A firm understanding of God's Word will never lead us astray, though it may lead us away from our own traditions.

"But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil" (Hebrews 5:14).