When we think about the future, we can easily get excited or anxious about the newness of all that is involved. For example, think back to your childhood and the excitement and/or anxiety that a new school year brought. A new school year meant new clothes, new shoes, new school supplies, new classrooms, and new teachers. All this change brought a level of excitement about what was to come and also perhaps some anxiety.
When we think about the future of our churches and our denomination, we find ourselves much like the grade-school kid—both excited and a bit anxious. Many will find themselves somewhere on the spectrum between one of two extremes: embracing all that’s new with no regard for the past, or resisting all that is new to cling to the past. As Free Will Baptists, we can pursue several paths to ensure that we will see a denomination that is faithful to the Lord and His Word in the future. The most fundamental thing we can do is to maintain our faith in the sufficiency of Scripture and allow it to shape our doctrine and practice in an ever-changing world.
Free Will Baptists and the Sufficiency of Scripture
Free Will Baptists have long taught the sufficiency of Scripture. Even our English General Baptist predecessors adhered to this doctrine.[1] In addition, the first article of faith in the Free Will Baptist treatise reads: “The Bible. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and are our infallible rule of faith and practice.”[2]
The sufficiency of Scripture, also known by the Latin phrase sola scriptura, means that “only Scripture, because it is God’s inspired Word, is our inerrant, sufficient, and final authority for the church.”[3] For centuries Free Will Baptists and their predecessors have taught and practiced this doctrine. As we press on to the future, we would be wise to learn from our ancestors and to maintain this high view of Scripture and its role in the church.
Sufficient for Church Doctrine
If Scripture is sufficient for our beliefs and our practices, then we should continue to rely on it in each of these areas. Both of these applications of the sufficiency of Scripture are at risk in an increasingly secularized culture. Currently, the evangelical community widely accepts Scripture’s sufficiency for our beliefs.[4] While this view may be true in the present, it is by no means guaranteed for the future.
Doctrine of Humanity
One doctrine that is vulnerable without a firm commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture is the doctrine of humanity. Christians have traditionally understood that God created humans in His image (Gen. 1:27). Humans exist because of a conscious and purposeful act by God Himself, and “they alone are capable of having a conscious personal relationship with the Creator and of responding to him, can know God and understand what he desires of them, can love, worship, and obey their Maker.”[5] God also created humans as gendered beings with distinct roles that complement one another.[6]
The normalization of secular views of gender and sexuality is threatening this basic position on how and why God created humans.[7] Michael A. Oliver explains that a secular mental health profession has hastened along this normalization.[8] For example, the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) in 1953 described homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance. By 1973 progressives had begun the process to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM, and by 1987 they had removed it entirely. A similar revolution has occurred with respect to the normalization of gender confusion in the mental health arena.
If the church is not careful, it will allow its theology of humanity to be weakened in a culture that normalizes what God abhors. Most often, this happens unintentionally. When someone personally experiences confusion with their sexuality or gender, or someone they love does, they might be tempted to reinterpret Scripture (or ignore it) to accommodate and cope with the situation. Thus the Scriptures are no longer sufficient to define with clarity what we should think about the issue. This example is just one among many of what could potentially occur if we do not view God’s Word as sufficient for all of our beliefs.
Sufficient for Church Practice
Not only is God’s Word sufficient for our faith (or what we usually refer to as doctrine), but also it is sufficient for church practice. This application of the sufficiency of Scripture is where most debate exists. We need to remind ourselves of two specific areas of church practice as we look to the future: corporate worship and church growth.
(a) Corporate Worship
God cares about how He is worshiped; thus the church should approach the worship of God with seriousness and reverence. J. Matthew Pinson points out that Free Will Baptists “find no need to improve upon scriptural teaching and example, and thus have avoided adding our own renovations or refinements to it.”[9] Free Will Baptists support freedom and simplicity in worship. We should not add to the Scriptures with liturgies and traditions in the way that Roman Catholics have done, nor should we add undue emotionalism to it.
The way that we accomplish such simplicity in our worship is through focusing on the ordinary means of grace: the elements that God has prescribed for worship in His Word. These elements include the reading and preaching of Scripture, prayer, singing, and the ordinances. These are the ways in which God expects us to worship Him, and we must remember that the primary audience of our corporate worship gatherings is not people but God Himself. We do not come to praise and glorify ourselves but rather to praise and glorify the God of the universe.
As the world changes, the church can easily change with it. Not to change is often seen as being stuck in the glory days of a former time period, but we should not evaluate the church in the same way that we evaluate the entertainment industry, which is something else entirely.[10] We may be tempted to make the church more entertaining or perhaps more attractive, but we do not need to make the same mistake that the Roman Catholics did, which led to the Protestant Reformation. Pinson explains that the Roman Church “made worship an ornate spectacle, drowning out the voices of God’s people, with the real action going on up front, in the chancel, where the priests were doing the spiritual work.”[11]
Are we not in danger of making the same mistake? Keith and Kristyn Getty warn us that this danger is especially strong with respect to singing together as a congregation. They point out that congregations mumbling quietly along as a band performs brilliantly on stage is not congregational singing. They say, “The medieval church made the error of treating the Lord’s Supper as something for the congregation to watch as the professionals at the front participated.”[12] Entertainment has always been a temptation for the church but perhaps even more so today in an age where passive consumption of entertainment is so normal.
(b) Church Growth
The entertainment industry also has a major impact on how we approach church growth. One great thing that everyone wants to see is for Free Will Baptist churches to grow, but we must not become so desperate for growth that we compromise the sufficiency of God’s Word for the life of the church. We must not give in and do “whatever works.”
The gospel creates a community that is far better than anything that church leaders could create on their own. That is not to say that churches cannot find ways to build community without relying on the sufficiency of Scripture, because, as Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop point out, “You don’t need God to ‘build community’ in a church.”[13] Clearly they don’t recommend this! But their point is that it is easy and tempting for church leaders to build churches where people bond over similar life experiences, similar jobs, similar age, and similar musical tastes. Dever and Dunlop caution leaders from drawing crowds based on similarities: “When Christians unite around something other than the gospel, they create community that would likely exist even if God didn’t. As a modern-day tower of Babel, that community glorifies their strength instead of God’s.”[14]
People naturally gravitate toward those with whom they share common interests, but we must remember that the gospel should be the primary focus for building community. It has the power to unite those who would likely never speak to one another were it not for the preaching of and belief in the gospel (Eph. 2:15–18). God’s Word alone is sufficient to unite people from all backgrounds and to build a community with a bond deeper than anything church leaders could manufacture if they grant themselves the liberty to add to the gospel.
Conclusion
Are you excited about the future of Free Will Baptists? Great! But don’t abandon the very means through which God has promised to bless His church for something seemingly more appealing and attractive. Are you nervous about the future of Free Will Baptists? That’s okay. God is sovereign, and He is not surprised about where our culture is today or where it is heading in the future. When He established the ordinary means of grace of reading and preaching the Word, praying, singing, and the ordinances, He knew what was coming. Therefore, we must trust in Him and in the sufficiency of His Word—for worship, growth, and every aspect of the church’s ministry and mission.
[1]J. Matthew Pinson, Free Will Baptists and the Sufficiency of Scripture, Free Will Baptist Heritage Series: Foundations of Faith and Practice (Nashville: Historical Commission of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, 2014), 5.
[2]Treatise of the Faith and Practices of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, Inc. (Nashville: The Executive Office NAFWB, Inc.), 2016.
[3]Matthew Barrett, God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture, The 5 Solas Series (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 23.
[4]Pinson, Sufficiency, 3n1.
[5]Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 436.
[6]Christa Thornsbury, “Biblical Complementarianism: A Brief Introduction,” The Helwys Society Forum, July 31, 2019; http://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/biblical-complementarianism-a-brief-introduction/; accessed March 24, 2020; Internet.
[7]For a brief overview of the social and legal developments of LGBT rights, see Matthew Steven Bracey, “Same Sex Marriage and Christian Citizenship,” in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church: A Christian Response in the New Cultural Landscape (Nashville: Welch College Press, 2016), 94–97.
[8]Michael A. Oliver, “Offering Hope and Healing to Those with Same-Sex Attraction,” in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church: A Christian Response in the New Cultural Landscape (Nashville: Welch College Press, 2016), 118.
[9]J. Matthew Pinson, A Free Will Baptist Handbook: Heritage, Beliefs, and Ministries (Nashville: Randall House, 1998), 93–94.
[10]David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 212–13.
[11]Pinson, Sufficiency, 4.
[12]Keith and Kristyn Getty, Sing: How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 73.
[13]Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop, The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 20.
[14]Ibid., 23.
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