As an Evangelical Free Church, Harbor is part of a movement that seeks to “glorify God by multiplying healthy churches among all people.” Sounds nice, but what does it mean to glorify God? And what does a healthy church really look like?
The answer to those questions is called theology. And while theology should remain consistent (in theory, at least) sometimes you need to tweak the way you express it in order to answer those questions better in light of the constantly-changing world around us.
A few weeks ago, I was in St. Louis to attend the EFCA national convention, where we considered the first change to our doctrinal statement in over 50 years. It took the form of a passionate, but loving, family discussion. While there were a few people who tried to manipulate the conversation through emotion or rhetoric (not that I’ve ever done that myself!), I was consistently impressed by the overwhelming spirit of humility and unity that prevailed.
This was only possible because we were considering changes that would stem off in advance the kind of heated arguments that other families are dealing with right now. I’ve been meaning to write a long blog post about this, but then I saw an article this morning at CT that explains it better than I could:
As a denomination, there are a couple surefire ways to get your name in the headlines. You can bow to popular wisdom on a major doctrinal issue, as the Episcopal Church did in 2003 by electing an openly homosexual man as bishop. Or you can weigh in against practices near and dear to some of your fellow Christians, as the Southern Baptist Convention did two years ago.
If you want to make sure no one covers your denominational meeting, here’s what you do: Revise your statement of faith before certain issues become disputed in your churches. And yet here I am writing about the Evangelical Free Church of America’s newly revised statement of faith. Why? Because the time to fix your doctrine is when it isn’t broke.
The rest of the article provides a great overview of the changes to the statement. It’s worth reading the whole thing.