Friday, July 3, 2009

Most Important Doctrine?

I won't often write about this affiliation we have at Community Park Church because I find the most important thing for the church to be engaged in is not separating herself from other Christians, but rather, to connect with the rest of humanity that God has called us to love.

That said, I was just at the national convention of the movement of which CPC is a part. I attended at town hall style meeting, that was intended to get the pulse of the grass roots of the movement. I have to say that the overall tenor of the meeting was to ask the national ministries how they are going to help local churches be unique (special/different/weird) doctrinally from the other churches that surround us.

This brought me back to an earlier conversation that I've had where I was asked what the most important teaching of the Church of God was. That person wanted me to name one of the unique (special/different/weird) teachings of the Church as the most important.

However that was not the question. The question was: What is the most important doctrine of the Church of God?

Jesus is Lord. Period.

That is the most important teaching of ours any other communion of Christians. Jesus is now the ruler of creation, surprising by way of death and resurrection and the Church is created and called to live out the new life of Jesus and declare his rule to the whole earth. Period.

What a national/state/district/local ministry needs be about more than anything is the lordship of Jesus. This means that a Church must make that call in an intelligible and relevant way in whatever culture she finds herself planted. This is the most important doctrine and task of any Church.

I love doctrine like any other preacher. I am positively nerdy about it! However, the quirky stuff is not my calling, Jesus and his Lordship is the calling. Will my movement and other movements and denominations and local churches accept this high calling, or will continue to wallow and squabble about things that are important, but are motivated by helping us to feel unique/special/different/ and dare I say it...weird?