Posts Tagged ‘toothpaste’

Church & toothpaste // denominational issues

January 21st, 2009

I have been thinking about this issue a lot lately, the issue of denominations. There are a lot of opinions floating around out there and there is a bit of theological controversy surrounding those conversations (at least there is theological controversy in my head when I think about it.)

So here’s the deal, people don’t care about denominations anymore. That is just the fact of the matter. Loyalty is no longer a denominational issue.

Question :: is this a good thing or a negative thing?

I find evidence of this fact in conversations I have all the time.

[example #1]
I was talking to a couple friends recently at a coffee shop. One friend, who has visited numerous churches over the past year — most having a denominational affiliation that you would never know about from simple attendance —  she said she doesn’t really care about denomination as long as they aren’t the conservative denomination that she grew up in. But I think what she was really saying was that I don’t care about the denomination as long as I don’t know about it. The other friend specifically said that she wanted to go to a non-denominational church because she doesn’t “want to be affiliated with any specific denomination.” Those were her words. Both friends are in their mid to late 20’s and reflect a generation pretty well I believe.

[example #2]
I recently had a conversation with a really successful non-denomination church planting pastor. He has planted a couple churches and the one he is currently pastoring is doing extremely well numerically and financially (at least i think they are). I was telling him a little of my story and how I am really thinking about planting a community / church. The issue of affiliation came up and he simply stated that he wasn’t sure that being connected to a denomination was helpful. I really like this pastor, awesome guys and a great heart and his perspective about denominational affiliation also reflects our culture and the reality that denominations, in general, are rapidly shrinking, as he stated. He also simply stated that denominations probably don’t do much to actually help the church plant other than providing some money, some times. He kinda insinuated that they might actually do more harm than good as you are trying to reach an “un-churched” population.

It seems that, from his opinion and the opinion of many others, denominational affiliation is actually a negative thing these days.
Yea? 

Then I ran across this little tid bit on relevant magazine.com / their neue network.

My Church, Yes. My Toothpaste, Never!
Evidently, brand loyalty is pretty low among Protestants. A new study found that only 16 percent of Protestants would not consider attending a church outside their denomination. The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Group, also found that 51 percent of Protestants say while they prefer the denomination they’re in, they would be open to others, while 33 percent say they have no denominational preference whatsoever. By contrast, 22 percent of Americans are completely loyal to a specific brand of toothpaste.

And that’s our culture. My guess is that if you narrowed the age group of this poll to 20 – 30 / 35 the numbers would be even crazier.

So when thinking about planting a church should you even consider affiliating yourself with a denomination?

Pastors :: why did you or didn’t you affiliate yourself with a denomination when you planted your community?

Those are the big questions. At least in my brain.

[some other thoughts]
And then there are the theological / ecclesiological thoughts swirling around in my brain.
I have for the majority of my life been very loyal to a particular denomination. They recently kicked me out (that’s a whole other series of posts) and now I am not sure how to think through all these issues. I am thinking and praying about connecting myself with another denomination, which isn’t really about community planting but rather more about ecclesial connectivity for me but of course if I am going to plant a community this has to be thought about as well. bla bla bla…

The thoughts / issues could go on and on.

What do you think?

Grace and peace
Erik

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