Dying Denominations

Awhile back, Derek Penwell wrote a blog post inviting Christians to reassess the priority we place on the death of denominations.  In this article, he wrote, “Today, denominational loyalty seems a quaint bit of nostalgia, like the gilded memories of neighborhood soda fountains and day baseball.”  Can we roll our eyes now?  The social impact of denominational loyalty is more substantial than soda fountains and baseball given by themselves the number of universities and hospitals started by denominations.  The past accomplishments and social goods gained by denominations do not by themselves justify denominational continuation.  Plenty of long-standing, historic institutions are proving that they must either radically revision their function (as in the case of public libraries) or face the inevitability of their obsolescence (as in the case of the US Postal Service).  If denominations no longer serve a useful purpose, they no longer serve useful purpose.  We can have a dignified burial.  But the obituary should have a broader view of their accomplishments than the one Penwell envisions—that they once provided a shopping guide for people looking for a congregation where their needs were met.

Denominations have provided the institutional structure for education, hospitals, nursing homes, children’s homes, emergency relief, global missions, new church development, ministerial education and accountability, discipleship ministries for young people in the forms of camps and conferences, bible curriculum, political advocacy (occasionally), ecumenical cooperation and the list goes on.  We do indeed need to accept that each of the things I just mentioned is being done differently today.  Few of the large institutions like universities, hospitals and nursing homes can rely on denominational funding solely and consequently balance denominational governance with other stakeholders. Churches of Christ have shown that global ministries can be sustained without a denominational structure.  Ecumenical institutions are facing the very same shifting cultural realities that denominations face.  Ministry education and accountability and church camps, if they are as necessary as I think they are, can be built beyond the formal denominations that have been their loci thus far. I not going to be that person who just thinks denominations have to stay alive because “we’ve always done it that way.”  However, we do need to take stock of what the “it” we’ve done through denominations really is.

The decisions we have to make are indeed bigger than whether our denomination needs rebranding.  These decisions include a lot of things that are important but not readily visible to the typical church-goer.  In a most cases, I don’t think we should spend too much time trying to explain it to everyone. When I go to the doctor, I don’t ask for a lecture on the state of the professional organizations to which he or she belongs.  I want the doctor to be board certified.  I do not want a comprehensive knowledge of what board certification really entails.  It matters to my doctor and therefore indirectly to me.

When parents pass away, the children or grandchildren have the painful task of going through the house and deciding what needs to be kept and moved and what needs to be thrown out.  If denominations are dying, we the children of denominations have that very same task.  If we dismiss our support for denominations too quickly we may discover that we did not make plans for how to accomplish some essential functions at a time when it’s too late to do anything about it--that we threw out something we really did need just because we didn’t think we needed it at that exact moment.  I’m of the opinion that we can be both realistic and faithful as we do so, but I don’t think it’s faithful to point at the denominational house of our parents and say, “all that’s in there are a few quaint memories.”