Winning or Losing a City (pt. 7) – Denominations
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I’ve deliberately argued that the local church is a priority for change -it’s where you break the cycle and start heading toward winning the city. But I also want to argue that denominations are of vital importance in the long term/big picture.
My reasons are:
1. (existing) Denominations have already fought the battles about how they believe the church should practice. They have the areas like baptism/liturgy/church governance decided and are therefore free to move forward with things like winning their city.
2. Denominations make sense as a way to co-ordinate resources. Churches can have funds centrally directed to:
- the Bible colleges which train their ministers and lay people
- Churches in areas which don’t generate enough income to pay a minister or run a building
- Care for the poor on a city-wide scale
- Run city-wide campaigns, evangelistic or otherwise
3. Denominations are already usually spread across a city and have property and infrastructure in place
4. Denominations often have historical links into the community and institutions like schools, nursing homes, prisons, hospitals and so on.
Denominations have, for historical reasons, always been a big feature of Adelaide Christianity. There are big churches in all the major ones and likewise there are good biblical churches in each. But there is one thing that denominations don’t tend to exhibit in Adelaide – none act as a consistent brand.*
Maybe stylistically there are some that are consistent, but theologically and purpose-wise they are pretty divided. If someone asked you ‘where’s a good church to go to?’ you couldn’t say ‘go to a baptist church’ or an anglican church. You’d have to be specific and name the particular church in that suburb that you had confidence in. I reckon that is crazy! You ought to be able to say go to the church of this ‘brand’ and know with some confidence that the brand means something. That you can trust it has this general theology and purpose.
Winning a city takes winning pulpits to start with, but winning them in every part of the city in the end. And ideally across a denomination. Denominations have great value for the reasons numbered above, but also for their power to provide a brand.
If a denomination can’t (even almost) entirely come on board after some time then I’d propose going out side the existing ones for a meta-denomination. Naming a movement where any church who is
- like-minded theologically
- has the purpose of winning the city
- wants to pool resources to achieve the kind of things above
- wants to belong to a brand that engenders confidence and is city wide/ubiquitous
Then they might get on board. I think that would be a great step toward winning the city.
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*I don’t know a great deal about pentecostal/aog churches but they may be an exception. Still i’ve said in comments previously I’m really interested in reformed/conservative theology…I think that has the best chance of winning the city.
Some denoms have more bureacracy than others. (And I mean bureacracy in a good way – resource sharing etc). The more autonomous chs (pentecostal, CoC, baptist) do less of this. The baptist union closed its bible college because it was almost walking distance from both BCSA and Tabor. On the downside it means they can’t get ministry going well in poor areas.
I think with “go to a baptist church” in Adelaide you can’t go too far wrong, having visited over a dozen over the years. Theologically and purpose-wise not too diverse though the style of service varies a bit.
The Hope mission network is a large explicitly evangelical subset of the Uniting Ch in SA, with over 60 churches in the state. If you add 3DNet, who are also largely on the same page, you’ve got over 100 including some biggies.
Having heard a lot about Sydney Anglicans there are great bonuses when a major (and wealthy) denom has its act together. But most of the action is happening at more local levels.
There are plenty of churches who really want to do their part in winning the city, but they won’t want to come under any extra banner. Many of us see the different denoms as there only for historical reasons – we are grateful for the work they do, but none of them are going to be a really key part of God’s plan. I’ll be back later with more ideas on how the mission (usually to a local people group rather than the whole city) should at least in part dictate how we organise.
And some time I might set up Mappage in such a way that we can map out where the reformed/conservative churches are that strongly match your vision and look at the implications of the map.
Reply to Eric@eric – That’s high praise of baptist churches! I guess i’ve not had a great deal of experience with them apart from through friends like yourself…
Maybe I need to get into believer’s only baptism
I’m convinced that you’re right: ‘they won’t want to come under any extra banner’. And maybe even for good reasons like just wanting to get on with what they’re already doing etc. I just reckon there is good long term value in common identification and co-ordinated use of resources.
The core of my vision is still with seeing the need and pursuing it at the local level as per earlier posts. And like you say many are already right on board with this. These thoughts about brands are more higher-level/down the track/secondary importance stuff. I still reckon it would be good and valuable though.
Love to see that kind of thing mapped…as and if you have the time and interest!
Reply to reuben