Neo-Denominationalism
by: Newbie
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“Denominations are breaking down,” or at least so claims the post-modern voices in churches today. But are they really? While there is little doubt that the traditional boundaries between churches seem to be fading, a whole new kind of denominationalism seems to be forming.
Missional churches, emerging churches, mega-churches, Purpose Driven Churches, seeker sensitive churches, community church models, ancient future models, prosperity gospel churches... the list of labels can go on. These groups, and others, are increasingly coming under organized leadership, are exchanging resources and sharing ideological similarities, all qualities that are driving the creation of neo-denominations.
“What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ." (1 Cor. 1:12) The words written some 2000 years ago to a church struggling to find central leadership still very much ring true today. In fact you could probably replace the ancient names with modern ones keeping the original meaning: “What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Rick Warren"; another, "I follow Leonard Sweet"; another, "I follow Brian Mclaren"; still another, "I follow Christ."
The polarization in ideologies that many of these leaders bring to the Church has created enthusiastic followings that have broken traditional boundaries in denominations and arguably begun to create new boundaries.
Instead of claiming allegiance to the various denominational ideologies more and more people claim allegiance to an author and his ideologies.
As a result of the leadership cult that exists around church reformers an onslaught of workshops, conferences and training handbooks are becoming available. Many of which would seem to exist to simply propagate one perspective or thought on ecclesiology. Instead of Baptists congregating together to learn more about what it means to be Baptist, you have seeker-sensitive minded people attending conferences together patting each other on the back for being post-denominational seeker-sensitive Christians. All the while ignoring the fact the through the conferences, authors, training manuals, and ideological similarities they themselves are becoming a denomination of their own.
While leadership and resource sharing are certainly a major part of any denomination, the ideological and theological polarizing would have to be the most telling as far as whether or not these new groups could in fact be called new denominations. Due to the availability of mass-market Christian training material, church leaders are more often choosing to use the pre-made material for their Sunday school and membership classes rather than the older denominationally specific material. While at first glance this would seem to be healthy as far as breaking down denominational barriers, it is in fact simply shifting the denominational lines.
The producers of all of this material still have their own biases, just as denominations do, but now the church has less control over the proliferation of ideas and the authors and publishers have more control. Beginning at a Sunday school level children are thinking and behaving in ways that are consistent with various authors, and not simply the Biblical truths. People are beginning to group together in new ways because of the teaching material and mass publication of a number of Christian authors. We are beginning to form new camps of thought, not around a denominational structure, but around an author or church planter.
It always amuses me to see a non-denominational church for example begin planting churches of its own. A good rule of thumb here is, where two or three [churches] are gathered, you have a denomination, albeit a small one.
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If your church is telecasting your preacher to a satellite church, sharing your mission statement and vision statements and resourcing the satellite church with all of your material, it’s time to stop calling yourself a non-denominational network of like-minded people. It is time to start seeing yourself as a neo-denomination, it’s a far more honest approach than pretending that you have no other allegiance than to God.
So are denominations fading?
Certainly the old denominational lines would seem to be blurring, but only because the new ones are growing in strength and power. Instead of having church institution and structure however, to keep the changes and ‘progresses’ in church thought accountable, we have authors, publishers and church planters.
While at first I was excited about the demise of denominationalism, now I am beginning to wonder. At least there was some system of accountability in the old denominations, now the only accountability force is the book publishers whose primary objective is often money and profit.
Who do you align yourself with? Who influences your theological perspective? Which authors are shaping your perspective? What new denominations are you becoming a part of?
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