The New Testament church can be identified in the scriptures. One should be able to open up the New Testament and find the church which Christ built. Furthermore, all who claim allegiance to Christ should be able to compare the church to which they belong with the one in the bible and see that they are identical. Sadly, most religious people who think that they are following Christ, not only cannot do this, but it never occurs to them that they should even try. There are literally thousands of churches today. We call them denominations. The question that I want to raise in this article is, “Was the church that Christ built a denomination?” If the answer is no, and I will show you, decisively, that the answer is no, then you should not want to be a part of a denomination. Fortunately, you can be saved and go to heaven after a while without being a member of any denomination. It is possible to be a non-denominational Christian. The only question is do you have enough courage and desire to please God to separate yourself from denominationalism?
 
What Is A Denomination?

The best place to start is defining what is a denomination. According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, a denomination is “a religious organization whose congregations are united in their adherence to its beliefs and practices.” This is a pretty good definition of a denomination. A denomination is an organization of congregations. I like to call them a church of churches. They are united together, not only by beliefs and practices, but also because of laws determined by men in positions of authority. Over every denomination is a man or group of men who decide what the rules and regulations that govern the denominations are going to be. This is why we hear of different denominations voting on things such as homosexuality, women pastors, etc., and why their laws change from time to time. Men on earth make decisions about these kinds of things because they have the power to do so. In the New Testament church the laws never change because they have already been determined by Christ, the only head of the church (Colossians 1:18).

As I mentioned above, denominational churches have an organizational structure that consists of a church of churches. Such is unscriptural. In last week’s bulletin, I revealed that the church is referred to in two ways in the scripture—universally and locally. The universal church is made up of individuals, not churches (1 Corinthians 12:27). The local church is made up of people too, but is restricted to a group in a specific geographical location rather than all the saved.

Where would you place a denomination in this picture of the church? Do denominations claim to be the universal church? No, most of them recognize that they are not composed of all the saved; thus, they are too small to be the universal church.

Who are the people who make up the universal church? They are those who obey the gospel of Christ. When Peter told the people in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost to repent and be baptized, they did it and were added to the church (Acts 2:36-47). You can be added to the church the same way today.

Would a denomination fall into the category of a local church? No, denominations are made up of hundreds of local churches; thus, they are too big to be a local church. Where does that leave them? It leaves them outside of scripture. There is nothing in the New Testament that comes close to resembling a denomination.

The organizational structure of denominations is not the only problem they have. Denominations were all built at the wrong time, in the wrong place, by the wrong people, and most of them wear the wrong name. These are not insignificant facts. Before we look at those things, though, we need to consider the local church. While the universal church does not have an organization, the local church does, and the pattern thereof must be followed (Hebrews 8:5). We will look into this next week.