40,000 Denominations and the Rest is Church History And there I sat in the middle of a bunch of people I didn’t know curled up in a corner crying. It’s not necessarily how I intended to spend my afternoon in the German countryside but that is exactly how it went down. I walked up the long steps of Eisenach Castle and found myself in the room where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into the common tongue for the first time in history. Sure, John Wycliffe had translated many parts by hand which he distributed to the Lollards (the people who followed his cause) who in turn went door to door reading the bible to many who had never heard it before in context, in their home BUT this was the very spot where church history would be shifted forever. I have heard all the stories of revivals and the wonderful outpourings that have happened in modern history but they all would not have been possible without what happened in this room. One man, hidden from the governments and religious authorities of his day scribbling down what would become the first bible in common language and spark a denominational spiral that would lead us to over 40,0000 denominations today (Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass/2011). There is more than just theological principles and Dogma at play here. We need to understand how the modern organization we call “Church” was birthed and why we have so many of the practices we have today. Do we even know why we tithe or why we meet on Sundays or why there is music in our meetings or why the pastor preaches or why do some churches believe in some spiritual gifts and not others? We are divided over thousands of small theologies that many of the average church attender knows nothing about when Jesus told us that the world when know we belong to Him when we “love one another”. Can we keep our names and titles and still “love one another”? If love is more than just simple agreement on the lowest common denominator then we need to learn where we came from so we can see where we are going, learning from past mistakes and loving the world into her destiny while displaying the full measure of the love of God towards each other. This is possible and it is what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God, a group of people committed to understanding and living in the will of God. This is what we will be discussing at our third ENTER/ACTION Session entitled Church History 101. We could have called it “What the Kingdom of God Actually Looks Like and Why Doesn’t Anybody Want to Do It” but Church History 101 seemed like a nicer place to start. Space is limited so register today or find out more information at jakehamiltonmusic/enteraction
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 16:20:59 +0000
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