Baptist Association & Denominations

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham.

David Kassin.

Chris Kiesler.

And we are privileged to read another good question that we've had sent in to our website. The question reads, I see Sunnyside is a Baptist church. Is it formally associated with a Baptist denomination?

If so, why? If not, why not? Can you speak more broadly to the reality of denominations? Are there too many? Is there value to them? Is there value in cross-denominational organizations? How does the local church fit into these discussions?

I'd say this person is curious about the whole thing. What do you think?

Yeah, this is a well-thought-out series of questions, all related, and we greatly appreciate that. Yes, Sunnyside has Baptist in its name. Therefore, Sunnyside is a Baptist church. Is it formally associated with the Baptist denomination?

No, we are not formally associated with any Baptist denomination, and there are many. So, the Baptist denomination, probably, someone's thinking about the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, we are not associated.

If so, why? We're not, but if not, why not? We are not, as a matter of history, we were.

Right, yeah, I think, what is it, back in the 70s?

1952, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, Sunnyside Baptist Church was planted in 1952, as legend tells it, on the nickels and dimes of EBS from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. Well, you gotta understand, back then, money was worth more, and EBS was three weeks long.

So, the church was planted as a rural church plant south of Southwest 44th Street, which everything south of there used to be out of town, south of the city limits. So, this was a country church, planted in an apple orchard on the sunny side of the street, hence the name, and the folks who gathered gathered around a burn barrel in the cold, prayed, and went home, because it was too cold.

And that's how the church got started. And W .E. Cresswell, who was a local pastor, took some out of his own flock, and they started a new church, all in good taste. They were just expanding and planting new churches.

And it was from the Baptist denomination, it was from Southern Baptists that the work arose, and under the pastorate of Jack Renfro, the church left the Southern Baptist Convention, because they were challenged, at the time, to pony up or ride on out.

In other words, are we going to be giving to the cooperative program, are we going to be giving to the missions, collectives of the Southern Baptist Convention, or not?

When did we leave the SBC?

I think it was sometime in the late 90s. I remember doing some history on the church, and trying to understand when it happened, and there were many communications between the elders and the congregation about why.

And it could have been a little bit earlier than that, but I think it was sometime in the 90s that it occurred. And the reason why is because the church has long supported missionaries more directly, and getting to know our missionaries.

We even have a missionary couple who are members of our church, so they live in the UK and do their ministry in South America, Latin America. And we like to directly support our missionaries, to get to know them, to fund them more directly than through the cooperative program and other kinds of large mission organizations.

Because of that convictional distinction, we were asked by Anthony Jordan, who was president of the BGCO at the time, to leave. And so we said, okay, sure, just for clarity's sake, we'll go ahead and leave.

And since then, I don't think the church has ever regretted not being a part. There's a lot of baggage now that comes from being a part of the SBC that, thankfully, we don't have to worry about. Now, it says, can you speak more broadly to the reality of denominations?

So in the word denomination, you have the idea of name. From this name, we proceed, is the idea of the term, okay? What is the name? The name is Baptist. Why would we put Baptist on our church name? There are other churches nearby who are Baptist churches, and indeed, they're actually part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but they have removed any mention that they are Baptist.

They take that out of their name. They take out any reference that they're part of the SBC, although they are a part, and they hide all that or remove all that, and they make no big fuss about it. They don't want people to look at their church sign and see a denominational name, even though they do belong to the denomination.

And they practice Baptist polity and baptism.

Yes, yes, but

So it's just kind of like a branding thing. We are a community church, or we are this North Fork church, something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Happy River, or whatever. So we have the point of denomination, I think, generally, is to let everybody know very quickly how your church operates and some of the secondary and tertiary things that you believe.

Okay, so if you see Baptist, you ought to think a certain type of church government or church polity, the way that they associate with other churches is going to be in a certain way versus a Methodist church or a Presbyterian church or an Episcopalian church.

You're hearing already about church government and the way that churches interact with each other. Also, you're hearing about the ordinances. If you see Methodist, you should think about a certain way that they do ordinances.

When you see Baptist, you think of a different way. The same with Presbyterian, the same with other denominations or whoever they may be. So denomination very quickly tells you, here are some of our distinctives.

And in that sense, you're serving others. You're letting them know, we think these things are important, and when we worship here, we worship around these convictions, and everybody holds them, and we're all in agreement here.

It's just part of who we are, and it's not about so much, get out of here, we don't like you unless you're one of us. That's how it's received sometimes, or that's sometimes the straw man idea of denominations.

But actually, you're just being very open and upfront about who you are. I'll give one story and let y 'all respond real quick. But when I was in college, and my job was to welcome freshmen coming in.

I was an RA and kind of working with the new students coming in, and everybody would come in and say, hi, my name is, and I'm from, except the guy's from Texas. And they would walk in and say, hi, I'm from Texas, and my name is.

And that's just telling people who you are. That's just upfront, I'm letting you know who I am so that there's no misunderstandings.

I'm laughing because I'm born and raised in Texas, and that's probably true.

Dave from Texas.

We need to normalize Oklahomans doing that.

No, it's Texas from which comes Dave. Nice. That's the introduction.

Solid.

So yeah, that's what it's there for. Primarily, it's there to kind of let everyone know, hey, this is who we are.

So as far as some of the history goes with our church in particular, it had to deal with missional giving and how we relate to missionaries personally rather than giving to a larger fund that decides, that makes those decisions for us, right?

That is correct. And this helps us have flexibility about who we support and how much and why, but it also gives us the ability to hold our missionaries accountable to be doing what they said they were gonna be doing and that if they change their beliefs or they change their practices, we know about it and that we can respond accordingly.

Even we've had times where we have exhorted and encouraged our missionaries to stay the course when we see some deviation and they have, praise God, and then we've had times when they have deviated and we have talked to them about that and they're so strong on changing their message and their approach that we say, well, you know, when we first decided to start supporting you, that wasn't what we had agreed to.

And so we're not saying necessarily that you're doing wrong, you're just doing other than what we had agreed to support. So we're gonna have an amicable parting of ways here and that just kind of helped us be better stewards.

So would you put that as one of the positives of not being a part of a denomination? Because that was one of the, like kind of a pros and cons question built in.

Yeah, so not being a part of the denomination, some of the pros are that you have less baggage and that you can be more flexible, more direct with your missionary support.

So kind of pushing back on that, you technically described us as an independent Baptist church.

Unaffiliated.

And so you have to qualify that.

Yeah.

Because if you're from the East, where my wife's from, in Virginia, an independent Baptist church has a particular flavor. There's even some independent fundamentals Baptist, there's IFBs, so there's so many denominations and then sub-denominations and there's so many different affiliations that are out there.

If you say we, Sunnyside Baptist Church, we are an independent Baptist church. But that carries with it a lot of baggage and that may be some of the cons of all the denominationalism. How would you respond when somebody says, oh, you're an independent Baptist church?

I say, well, actually we're unaffiliated. So because the term independent has become part of a sub-denomination. So there's Baptist, from this name we proceed, independent is also adding to it a lot of distinctives that are associated with Baptist fundamentalism.

So independent fundamentalist Baptist church, they just dropped the fundamentalist, it's just independent Baptist. If you say independent Baptist, you should expect there to be a high degree of modesty, probably enforced by address code, there's probably going to be King James only, there's going to be a very particular version of dispensationalism.

So there's just going to be some basic things that make them very, very similar to each other. And that's okay, but that's not who we are. So we don't say independent Baptist church, we say we're unaffiliated.

And that makes it much more clear for anybody showing up.

Yeah.

I had a comment and then kind of a clarifying question maybe so the idea of what about denominations, is it bad to have so many or that type of thing? And my mind went to Romans 14, which there's a lot of discussion there about preferences and about the, what are we doing as Christians?

And so in Romans 14, there's discussion about one favors one day over another day. So you've got, you see their preferences and you had mentioned things that separate denominations. So we've got doctrines, structure, traditions, preferences, and the Bible addresses how we deal with those types of things.

I think particularly Romans 14, one through 13 is very helpful. So if anyone wanted to go and look at that, but it talks about eating different things, esteeming different days, all these different preferences, but it talks about verse four.

Who are you to judge another servant? To his own master, he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand for God is able to make him stand. And so you have these different preferences and here he's asking, who are you to judge another man's servant?

This being, he's a servant of God. God has him doing something and God has you doing something. Later on in the chapter, he kind of talks about, this is verse 13. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or cause to fall in our brother's way.

So I think the fact that there are different denominations is a good thing. We can see God's sanctifying work in these different preferences. People trying to study the Bible who have good faith, we come to different perspectives on doctrine, but they hold the Bible as the word of God.

It's infallible. They're following after Jesus. Maybe they're interpreting it a little different, but God will lead them. And so there's the ability to have these differences of opinion. And so you'd get these different groups.

One of them, I guess my question would be, we've got these doctrines, structures, traditions, preferences that will separate us into denominations. What constitutes as a denomination? So there are some other groups, maybe like Jehovah's Witness or Mormon or Eastern Orthodox and Catholic.

Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, there seems to be a claim to the one church. And then you've got all these splits, right? You've got Protestantism. I mean, that's what that's all about. So how are we defining what a Christian denomination is?

That's a good question. So very often you'll hear the uninformed, usually in mass media somewhere, listing Roman Catholics and Baptists as different denominations, something like that. Or they'll list Mormons, Greek Orthodox, Baptists.

These three different denominations can't get along. But those are different altogether. Well, Mormons are a different religion, okay? And Roman Catholicism is a false church because they deny the gospel of Jesus Christ, very carefully and precisely deny the gospel of Jesus Christ in their documents.

And then add a whole bunch of other things. So it's a completely other church. It's not just a different church, it's an other church. It's not something where we're going to say, oh, that's just, that's kind of like the Presbyterians versus the Baptists.

It's not on the same kind of level. So when we talk about denominations, I think you're kind of identifying some things there where we can worship together and like faith and practice and we're not tripping over each other.

And that's a good thing. I would, probably it's a better thing if we can worship together in the same church and love one another and exalt Christ together, even though we have different convictions. I think there's a maturity level there that has to be there as we grow up into Christ where we're putting the attention on Him, okay, rather than the secondary and tertiary issues.

But if it is a matter of true conviction, like if you have some Presbyterians who understand their children as part of the covenant of grace and it is their faithful duty unto Christ to have their children sprinkled as full-fledged new covenant members, even though they're not born again yet, okay, because that's how they understand the scriptures.

This is a secondary issue, but it's one that's going to very much distinguish between a Baptist church and a Presbyterian church. And if you've got a family who's coming to a Baptist church and they are so under concern, okay, that my children aren't baptized and they need to be baptized, we can't do that here.

Sorry, can't do that here. We don't teach that form of covenantalism, okay? We don't have that here. That's not our focus and conviction. But there will be a church that does, okay? And we're gonna call them our brothers and sisters in Christ, okay?

There's a unity there, but they need to have that space to be able to practice their convictions in a way that is, okay? And then on top of that, some Presbyterians are gonna say, well, also the Sabbath day, the Christian Sabbath is Sunday and no work ought to be done.

And in order to be in good conscience with others, they need to agree with me on that. And we can't just have like a agree to disagree about that. And then on top of that, there's a Presbyterian family also is gonna be saying, well, the wine that's served has to be actual wine, has to come from one cup and also head coverings.

And also we can only sing Psalms. And okay, when you go down the line, you know what? There is a Psalm only, head covering, one cup Sabbath observing Presbyterian church right here in Oklahoma City. Praise God, you can go there and you can worship freely and you can love each other.

And now, so there are others who are gonna be just fine saying I have all these convictions, but you know what? I'm gonna hang out with people who have those different convictions and we're gonna be able to worship together in the same church and I'm not stumbled.

I'm not stumbled because we disagree. I prefer that. I prefer probably less denominations. Now there's a difference between denominations in the lowercase d, just kind of a general descriptive noun versus the proper noun, capital D denomination which engages all manner of bureaucracy and organization and funding and politics and all kinds of.

All the fun stuff.

Oh yeah.

And so those are not exactly the same as.

Distinctives.

The term Baptist or the term Methodist. It's not the same thing as Southern Baptist. It's not the same thing as United Methodist. So we need to recognize that. I think the general descriptive terms are helpful.

We're trying to serve each other in talking about those things. We shouldn't be severing from each other hard about those things. We should be discussing those things, serving each other. But the capital D denominations with all the organizations, there's a lot of turf war there where they're, and a lot of these things are businesses, business models and they've gotta make their money and stay afloat and there's a lot of pressure on that.

So I'm not really for that, I would say. So I think, so there is some value in cross-denominational organizations. I think something like the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals can be helpful. There are some groups that kind of reach across the whole point is like, hey, we are one in Christ.

We have one spirit. There's one gospel. We have one Lord. There's one salvation. And even though we have, we're in different churches because of where we live and some of our convictions, there is a real genuine unity in coming together.

So I think there's some positives there. It could turn into an ecumenical mess, but.

So we have core convictions that unite us as brothers and sisters in Christ. You mentioned that. And we have so many different denominations that people seem to be separating on relatively minor things.

So there is an element where you say, yes, these are core Christian principles. Perhaps you could say the ancient creeds. If you can affirm some of the ancient creeds, then in good conscience, then yes, you're brothers and sisters in Christ.

But you are, at least in Protestantism, or maybe modern Evangelicalism, there's an element of conscience that says, all right, we should be able to get along. We should be able to, you have a conviction this way, I have a conviction this way.

We can still worship in the same church. Those are minor things. But it can reach a point to where that matters of conscience become matters of true conviction. And at that point, you're saying that it's okay, even good, to have these multiple choices for people, even within your own city.

You can say, well, if you're really leaning more towards more of an Episcopate style of church government, well, you do have that in the Anglican church, and you have it in the Methodist, or it says, well, I really like more of the Presbytery church government.

Okay, or you really want more of the independent style. Okay, those are matters of true conviction. It says, I just need to be part of this church. You're saying those are not necessarily bad things. In fact, they can actually be a good thing because it allows people to worship according to their conviction.

So in that case, denominations are a help and not a hurt. Is that so far? But then you went on to say, I wish there weren't so many denominations. So I know you probably can't put a fine line on that, but if you could, where would that line be?

Yeah, I think the line should be like where you were talking about in terms of convictions. I think there needs to be a lot of pastoring and shepherding done for folks where they're not so cantankerous on some things.

Now, I want to be sensitive to that because I've been cantankerous on a lot of things in my life, too. But in general, what do we see in the pastorals in 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus? How does Paul instruct these men doing pastoral work?

It's to move people away from the word twisting, too much concern about the law, all these ancillary concerns. There needs to be a focus on Christ. So in 1st Corinthians 1, there's contentions. One says, I'm of Paul, I'm of Paul, so I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ.

And so Paul says in verse 13, is Christ divided? Well, we know that's an obvious answer, Paul. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? And we've got to ask that question.

We've got to be clear on that. So why would we have different denominations at all? Okay, well, some of it's going to be, of course, how we think that Jesus wants us to do church, okay? So if it comes down to that, I really think that Jesus wants us to do church by having a presbytery over the churches, and this presbytery is underneath another presbytery, which is underneath a synod or whatever.

And we think that that is biblical, and that's the way it ought to be done. And someone else is going to be saying, I think you're reading a lot too much into Acts. I think you're trying to put into practice something that was meant for a particular point in time, and I don't think Jesus wants us to do church that way.

Okay, at that point, there's going to be a divergence, but we're not pointing at each other and saying, well.

Anathema.

Yeah, exactly, we're not saying anathema to each other. We're saying, God bless you.

Well, and that's even a mechanism for the spread of the gospel.

It is.

You have these divisions, and like, I'm going over here, you're still a brother, but I can't be with you in the same church worshiping, so we're going over here, and they're going over there, and the gospel spreads.

So Paul and Barnabas couldn't agree about John Mark, and then they went separate ways. So, and not too long after that, there was the Dionysus Controversy in the early church, where some bishops did not hold true under fire, and then they wanted to come back into the church afterwards, and it was like, well, who do you think you are, Peter?

So there was a lot of disagreement about how to handle certain things, but in the divvying up and in the disagreement, Jesus is a perfect shepherd. It doesn't matter how chaos we think it is in the fold, and then we see the sheep going this way and that way, and why is that sheep jumping over that sheep over there?

The shepherd is moving things along, and he's doing a great job, but our attention should be on him. Our ears should be tuned to his voice, not the bleating of, you know, well, these guys aren't exactly like us.

Yeah, I think in the discussion about different doctrines, preferences, all these different things, I found that part of it, so the truth of the thing, it's important. Knowing your Bible is important.

Talking about it is important, but just as important, it seems, is our sanctification in how we talk about it. So say you've got a husband who's a cage-stage mint chocolate chip guy, and he's like, this is important.

Mint chocolate chip is the best ice cream. Now, he can either yell at his wife about it.

Is that a euphemism? Yeah, it's like cage-stage something, okay.

You know, this is important, and how he interacts with the people around him on this important thing to him is very important in God's sanctifying work. So you can put in whatever doctrine or whatever preference, denomination, how we interact with our brothers and sisters in Christ is important, and oftentimes, those differences are the opportunity to grow in that.

And so in Romans 14, the first verse, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things, and then he goes into those differences. It says to receive them as brothers, but not for the sake of arguing.

Before we move on to that next question that we have that's tangential to this, would you think there's anything that we could say to either steel man, in a way, being a part of a big D denomination, or something that maybe we feel that it's harder to work from our position as unaffiliated, that it would be easier to be a part of a bigger denomination?

So yeah, great question. So in the most positive way that we could see this, if there was a proper organization of a great body of churches, some local churches would be rescued from grave error by a kind of oversight and getting involved of other churches and ruling elders who were above the local scene.

There could be some help in that. We could also see, I remember talking to some missionaries, and there's probably 1 ,001 missionary groups in any given 1 ,000 square miles of Africa, okay? But it's the Southern Baptists who show up on time.

Right, so when you talk to missionaries out on the field, it's like, well, everyone else can't get through, but why? Because they just have tons of money, they have tons of experience, they've got all the relationships in place,.

And they just Infrastructure, that's good.

The infrastructure, the logistics work. So there's some benefit. You could say, wow, if they hadn't been doing this, you may complain about X, Y, and Z, but on the other side, this is kind of nice. And so you can see some benefits, and a lot of them come down to, I would say some of them are pragmatic arguments, but hey, Proverbs is full of some pragmatic ideas.

God didn't create us to govern His world and to get the gospel out in inefficient ways, right? He's not glorified by us not organizing ourselves well. So there are some things that could be good. I would also say that for some, in some cases, in some points in history, I don't know if it's current, larger denominations can help provide theological education to their pastors.

There can be kind of a feedback loop of support and strengthening of local churches because their ministers are being well-educated by the capital D denomination. That also all has its

Drawbacks.

Drawbacks and negative sides, and so on. Also, being an unaffiliated local Baptist church, we just don't have a lot of natural relations with other churches if we wanted to combine to do something.

So in preparation for this, and I hope I'm not going too far off the rails because I know we need to move on, but in preparation for this podcast, I was volunteering at my daughter's church, my daughter's school, which is actually at a church, and I was in their fellowship hall where they have a study hall, and I had this other parent next to me, and her son came up a little bit later.

He was a teenager. We had just struck up a nice conversation, friendship, and I watched this mom with her teenager actually do Bible study through Galatians and Genesis, and they were going through some of the Hebrew and other things.

It was really neat to watch this. So I said, about 20 minutes left to go in my shift, and I asked him this very question, and she hates all the different denominations. She really wishes that we didn't have them.

They just cause division, and talked about Apollos, and talked about those things in 1 Corinthians, and says that it's why are we creating more and more denominations because we're just having more man-made systems put on the Bible who just focus on the Bible itself.

We wouldn't have all these denominations, and I appreciated her candid response. I asked her son, and he gave me an answer that was based on, well, he says, yes, we were looking at 1 Corinthians, and yes, there are some places where these divisions were motivated by things other than Scripture, but there is a place for conscience, and sometimes, as long as you're not violating the core principles of Christianity, because we can call each other brothers and sisters, we can gather together based on our conscience, and I think that's a good thing.

I was so impressed with this young man, and his ability to articulate his thoughts, and his mom, to her credit, didn't correct him. She wanted him to express his opinion on denominations in general, good or bad, and why, and he did so, so I really appreciate, yes, there's education within the church.

Yes, there's education within big D denomination, but I witnessed a small family doing education within that family, and they were basing their answers on their own convictions from the Scriptures themselves.

I just applaud that family.

Well, it's kind of hard to correct your son when he's basing his argument and conscience to begin with, so that would have been a difficult one to do, and I think it's safe to say here at the table that we are not in favor of a state church, correct?

That is correct.

Okay, I'm just making sure. And I think we can hit this next question.

A national church, yes.

No, no, no.

No, no, no. Just.

I think we can hit this next question pretty quickly, because of how we've laid the groundwork here, so I'll go ahead and ask the question. The question reads, I'm an associate pastor at a Disciples of Christ church.

They continue to give to the denomination. The denomination supports multiple sickening agendas openly. If I can't convince them to stop giving, I don't feel I can keep my family here. Is that a reasonable conviction?

Perhaps this question could help others as well. Thanks.

He's an associate pastor, and I don't know the Disciples of Christ all that well, but he is an associate pastor. Does that mean he's being paid, he's on staff?

That's correct.

Okay.

Yeah, so that's a hard decision to make, but I think of this dear brother, and I think of the way he expresses himself here, sickening agendas. Now, those who devise these agendas and are really promoting it, they're not sickened by them.

Right?

They're perhaps encouraged by how much progress these agendas are making, these initiatives, but this dear brother is sickened by them, okay? And very clearly, therefore, he sees that these are not biblical.

They're not in accord with godliness, not in accord with Christ. They do not bring glory to his name, and this church is financially giving towards that. Perhaps they're not championing these things. Perhaps they're not going to the parade and cheering for these things, but because they belong to the denomination, this is what they always have done.

They're not really trying to promote ungodliness, per se. They, as well, think they're doing something pretty much what you're supposed to do. So, if you have a difference of conviction that strong, and you see it as even more than simply a conviction, it's not really preference, it's here's what God's word says in the most plain language that you can see, and yet you are supporting something that's contrary to it, then, for the sake of your own conscience, for the good of your own soul, you need to find a way forward.

And if that is prayerfully, talking with your wife, prayerfully seeking counsel, but then praying to the Lord, saying, Lord, how long do you want me to labor for the good of this church from the position that I'm in, where I'm not in the higher authority I'm supposed to be augmenting and blessing and supporting, how long should I labor from the position that I'm in to see the change that I think you would wanna see in this church before you'd like me to move on?

I think it's well worth the effort to try to labor and be a blessing to that church, even if you don't stay there, even if you're not there in six months. The time that you have spent there, if you do it, if you labor in love and sincerity and really advocate for these folks to follow the word of the Lord and trust Jesus and do the right thing, even if, when you're gone, those folks are gonna remember you and say, you know, we didn't agree, but you could tell that he loved us, and man, do we miss his Bible teaching.

You know, there's gonna be something missing, and that's gonna be helpful as well. So if you've got to move on and change, I think that that is a legitimate reason to move, but unless you're confronted with the kind of actual crisis moment where someone is basically saying, you go out and lead these initiatives personally and parade this or resign, I don't think you have to resign tomorrow.

I think if you're recognizing that, hey, this is not really compatible, then labor what you can do, recognizing that there may need to be a change, and I think that would be a wise way to proceed. You know, remember that David served under Saul, and things were a little odd, and then they were bad, and then it was rough, and he continued to work for Saul, King Saul, as his liege, until he couldn't.

Okay, so, and he kind of knew it was heading the wrong way anyway, but do what you can while you can, but if you've got to leave, leave, but do so in a way that is godly, meaning do everything you can to provide for your wife and kids.

When you hear that in the question, that I can't convince him to stop giving, I don't feel I can keep my family here.