HE IRRELEVANCE OF DENOMINATIONS [F, 6-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Irrelevant Old Preacher--THE IRRELEVANCE OF DENOMINATIONS [F, 6-5-26]

 

I know you are eager to hear about the irrelevance of preachers, and I did promise that for today, but my scheduling is unreliable, and first we have to consider the irrelevance of denominations…

The original purpose of denominations was so that you knew who to avoid. You could go to any town and know that Catholics would not recognize Lutherans, and Lutherans would not recognize Baptists, and Baptists would not recognize one another in the liquor store.

I love that sort of joke, but it takes us away from the main point. There were theological differences between denominations, and people were convinced they would go to hell if they got mixed up with the wrong belief system. More importantly, there were cultural differences. Often language differences. A denominational label was a handy way of knowing who to avoid.

Gene Matthews was the preacher for a while at Forsythe Methodist, the little open-country church that nurtured me. He was a factory worker who got the call to preach in middle age. He took the courses to get a License to Preach and filled in part-time wherever he was needed.

One week, that was the Methodist Church in Darmstadt, near Evansville, where he lived. He was newly licensed and wanted to show off his preaching skills. That was back in the day when many churches had open Bibles already on the pulpit. Gene decided he would study the scripture for the day and just preach directly from the pulpit Bible. When he got there, though, he discovered that the pulpit Bible was in German! It had been a German Methodist congregation. They had given up worship services in German during WWII. But they had kept that old Bible. It was as much a part of their Methodist heritage as Wesleyan theology.

Denominations are about connections. In a denomination, congregations aren’t separate entities; they belong to something bigger, a system that works together, to establish and sustain colleges and universities and hospitals and missions and children’s homes and old folks homes.

Now, though, all those institutions have been taken over by government or rich people on boards of directors. A university or hospital might still carry the name of a denomination—Lutheran or Presbyterian or Whatever—but the church has no say about what goes on there.

I started these irrelevancy columns by saying no one wants to be a preacher. Well, that’s not true. There are plenty of folks who want to be preachers, but they don’t want to be part of a larger church, a denomination. They don’t want to go to seminary, or be vetted by peers, or know anything about comparative theology, or be questioned about whether they have the necessary “gifts and graces” to be effective pastors. They don’t need a degree or an ordination. They are “called,” and that’s all they need. They are business entrepreneurs. Denominations are irrelevant in a culture that is entrepreneurial.

Ordination is outdated. Now, whoever wants to be a preacher, they just declare themselves a preacher. They rent an empty building, give it a name that includes words like journey or harvest or new or start or, especially, community, and they’re a preacher, although they rarely call themselves that. They are the messenger or the leader or the prophet.

We don’t want to relate to other people in other congregations. We want just our own little New Start or New Life or New Hope or New News congregation, our own bunch of people self-selected to be like us, our own preacher who has no responsibility to anyone but us.

In a non-connectivity culture, indeed an anti-connectivity culture, denominations are irrelevant.

John Robert McFarland

“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is to try to please everybody.” Herbert P. Swope