Category Archives: church leadership

The Problem of Church Squatters (Part Two)

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Today I’d like to share with you my reply to the distressed lady whose letter I posted in part one of this series on the problem of church squatters. If you have not read the previous post, please take a look at it before you read my reply.

Reply to a Distressed Lady

Dear Sister:

Forgive my delay in replying. I wanted to think carefully about what to say. I am not facing the problem you describe, and as you pointed out, I cannot simply tell you what to do. But I offer my thoughts in hope that they will help you discern the Lord’s will.

First, I want to write about my reactions as I read your letter.

Sadness, Anger, and Joy

I read your letter with a mixture of sadness, anger, and joy. I was overjoyed that you have not been deceived by clever arguments or intimidated by the self-confident majority into giving up Scripture’s clear teaching and the church’s traditional doctrine on marriage, family, and sex. You do not need me to teach you anything on this subject. I will simply say: Be confident. You are right.

I was saddened to hear that your church home has been invaded and occupied by squatters and deceived into abandoning clear apostolic teaching. Many believers know that affirming and celebrating LGBTQ+ relationships is wrong, but I’m not sure everyone realizes how wide it opens the doors to other evils. It rejects the created order and, therefore, denies the wisdom of the Creator (Romans 1:18-32). The distinction and complementarity of male and female are so obvious and basic that to erase them you must deny the very existence of a divinely intended created order. Created human nature becomes a realm of raw material to be reshaped according to human desires. The heavens can no longer declare the glory of God. The moral law possesses no authority to forbid idolatry, lying, murder, adultery, and theft. Not only must affirming- and celebrating-churches ignore the natural moral law, they must ignore Scripture’s moral teaching; for Scripture affirms all the elements of the moral law, intensifies them, and sets them into relation to Jesus Christ (On this theme, see J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide.) For these new Gnostics, God becomes utterly irrelevant to the moral life. They substitute human subjectivity and autonomy in the place of natural and divine law. The inner self becomes an idol and the true object of worship.

I am angered by your elders’ and pastors’ efforts to justify this decision from Scripture, thereby compounding immorality with heresy. Their interpretations of Scripture are so implausible that I find it difficult to accept that they believe them. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone offer these new interpretations in what seemed to me a sincere spirit of obedience (For my analysis of these arguments, see my book The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living). It’s always part of an effort to evade the force of Scripture’s teaching. Squatters by their actions show themselves to be thieves and liars. And that makes me angry.

What to Do?

Churches are always mixed bodies of saints and sinners. In almost any church you visit, it is likely that there are secret unbelievers and immoral people sitting in the audience. Those traditions that attempt to purge the church of every sinner tend to do more harm than good by their heavy-handed interrogations. They forget Jesus’s parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). If you attempt to pull up all the weeds you will damage the wheat. Wait until the end and the Lord will separate the two. You don’t need to leave a church just because it contains secret fornicators, idolaters, and doubters. There are no pure churches.

No church possesses and teaches perfect doctrine. For 2,000 years, the church has conducted internal debates about worship, food, predestination, the atonement, the sacraments, church offices, and many others. You don’t need to separate from a church with which you disagree on a point of doctrine as long as that doctrine does not contradict the gospel or the Christian way of life. Scripture is unambiguous about many things but not all. How do the sacraments work? What does Scripture mean by election and predestination? Should the church organize itself in a presbyterian or episcopal or congregational way? Churches that claim to teach the whole doctrinal truth and nothing but the truth often engage in fights, purges, and divisions. You must follow your conscience.

However, when a local church or a denomination comes to be led by people who teach heresy, things become more complicated. Though your church affirms and celebrates LGBTQ+ relationships, apparently it tolerates you and others who disagree. So, you are not being forced to choose between violating your conscience or giving up your membership. You will have to examine your conscience before God.

In examining your conscience, I don’t think there is one set of questions you should ask. Our consciences have a way of speaking to us even when we don’t ask questions of them. They can warn us not to rationalize our lack of courage or ignore our hypocrisy or justify our sloth. They can counsel us against being used by the heretics to minimize the seriousness of their errors.

Another often overlooked factor comes to mind. If you are not a leader, a teacher of the faith, or in contemporary terms, an influencer, you may have less of a responsibility to break from your church even if it teaches a heretical doctrine, that is if there are some redeeming aspects to the church. Remember Abraham’s discussion with God about how many good people it would take to save Sodom from destruction (Genesis 18). If by staying you do not contribute to the spiritual downfall of others, you may not bear the guilt of the false doctrine taught by your church. You have to think about that.

For me, however, things are very different. I could not remain in attendance and fellowship with the church you describe. Because I have a responsibility to be a teacher of God’s people and have done so for over 50 years, my continued presence would tend to minimize the seriousness of its heresy. Perhaps my silence could even be used to justify it.

I have not told you what you should do. But I hope these thoughts will help you gain perspective. Above all, examine your conscience in prayer before God. May God give you courage to do what is right and the peace to live with your decision.

In Christ,

Ron Highfield

A Time for Orthodoxy (Part Four)

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Today I will conclude the series urging anti-creedal churches to rethink their opposition to explicit creeds, confessions of faith, and statements of belief.

A Little More History

The Early and Patristic Church

Creeds, confessions of faith and statements of belief served different purposes in different eras of church history. Beginning with the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), early and patristic church leaders met on occasion to deal with controversies. They sometimes issued decrees clarifying controverted issues and condemning erroneous views. For example, the decrees (creeds) from the first two ecumenical Councils, Nicaea and Constantinople (I) built on the list of truths articulated in the early rule of faith. The Councils found it necessary to clarify certain disputed points and condemn certain assertions made by the Arian party, which asserted that the Son of God was not truly God but the first and greatest creature. Wisely, these Councils made no attempt to articulate everything Christians believe and practice. Not only would this have been impossible, it would have engendered fruitless controversies. They left all these things implicit in the tradition of worship and the practical life of the church.

I see much wisdom in the patristic church’s practice. The Christian faith cannot be articulated in all its fulness and richness. As philosopher of science Michael Polanyi observed, “we know more than we can say.” If the church tries to say everything it knows, it will complicate what is simple and oversimplify what is complicated. But there are times when the church must articulate some piece of its tacit knowledge and condemn the worse distortions of its faith.

The Protestant Reformation

When Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and other branches of the Protestant Reformation organized themselves into separate bodies, they promulgated confessions of faith to clarify for the world what they believed and taught and how they differed from the Roman Catholic Church and each other. Among the earliest of these are the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of Faith (1530), the Reformed First (1536) and Second (1566) Helvetic Confessions of Faith, and the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563). These documents were much longer than the Nicene Creed and covered a more extensive catalogue of doctrines. Nevertheless, the Protestant confessions did not attempt to articulate the full depth and riches of the Christian faith. Every later Protestant body explicitly or implicitly followed the same rule.

The proliferation of Protestant confessions of faith was driven by necessity. Given the separation from the Roman Catholic Church and the disputes among themselves Protestants had to make clear how they differed from the RCC and each other. This task remains necessary even for contemporary anti-creedal churches. How else may anti-creedal churches let the world know that they differ from other churches by rejecting creeds?

Contemporary Independent, Community, and Bible Churches

In this list I include every church whose primary leadership and identity rests in the local congregation. Instead of a Protestant confession of faith, they often list their beliefs on their website or in printed material under the rubric “What we Believe.” This list usually includes basic teachings common to all orthodox churches (Trinity, Christ’s Deity, Atonement, Resurrection, etc.), some that are central to Protestantism in general (justification by faith), some that are characteristic of the parent denomination, and some that are important to the identity of that particular congregation. Most of these statements are not too long, at most 20 points. Like the Patristic church and the churches of the Reformation, community and Bible churches do not attempt to put into words everything they teach and practice. You learn these things, if at all, by long years of participation in the life of the church.

The Present Challenge: Progressive “Christianity”

As I explained in the first essay in this series, my faith was nurtured in a conservative wing of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. That is where I serve today and expect to serve for the rest of my life. We like to think we preserve some unique insights within a generally Protestant tradition. To the outside observer, however, we look like most other low church Protestant groups. We cherish the canonical scriptures and adhere (informally) to the orthodox ecumenical faith set out in the ecumenical creeds. But we wished to be guided by Scripture alone apart from detailed Protestant confessions of faith. Our original aim was to protest against the use of minor theological differences to exclude and condemn other believers. We wished to reclaim in practice the biblical doctrine of the unity of the church.

A Different World

Today, however, our anti-creedal stance has made us less able to assert biblical/orthodox teaching even in the most fundamental areas, which in the past we took for granted. Our hesitancy to assert doctrinal truth has opened the door to heresies that never came knocking in the past. We face a decisive moment. Will we assert and enforce the biblical/orthodox faith by making use of the authorities of scripture, tradition, and office or succumb to the spirit of the postmodern age in which everyone is their own judge?

Admittedly, I am speaking here of urban and suburban churches. Rural and small-town churches face other issues. What, then, is the challenge urban and suburban SCM and other independent, community, and Bible churches face? Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I think the greatest challenge to the orthodoxy of those churches is the temptation to assimilate to the progressive sector of modern culture.* That is to say, to adopt an easy-going inclusivism that accepts everyone the way they are. No demand for conversion, repentance, or confession! Sexual promiscuity? No problem! Wish us to affirm your LGBTQ+ way of life? Who are we to judge! Your inner self is the measure of your truth! Want to divorce your spouse because you found someone else? We understand…God wants you to be happy! Abortion…well, at least you struggled with the decision. You think everybody will be saved? Makes sense…God loves everyone! Want a social justice Jesus? So do we!

A Time to Stand

I am speaking to those church leaders and planters who want to preserve the biblical/orthodox faith. I urge you to follow the example of the early and patristic church. State clearly what your church believes and practices. Make it concise, but include the ecumenical faith, other basic teachings, and do not neglect the beliefs challenged by the progressive heresy: affirm the positive teaching of Scripture on these subjects, but also make clear your rejection of the progressive principle of religious and moral relativism and the specific progressive heresies mentioned above.

*Use the search function on my blog to look for essays that deal with “progressive Christianity.”