Why are there so many Christian denominations?

In this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Jim Denison and Dr. Ryan Denison for a thoughtful conversation on the history and diversity within the Christian faith. Together, they explore the key moments that shaped the church, including the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, and Vatican II. They also discuss the rise of non-denominational churches and what it looks like to find a faithful church home in today’s landscape.

This conversation offers both clarity and encouragement for Christians navigating differences in doctrine and tradition—and reminds us why unity in Christ still matters.

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Topics

• (01:21): Personal story and introduction to denominations
• (03:43): The conclave and selection of a new pope
• (11:32): The Great Schism: East vs. West
• (20:26): The Protestant Reformation and its impact
• (26:05): Magisterial vs. Radical reformers
• (32:20): Baptism and church membership challenges
• (33:45): The impact of Vatican II
• (40:36): Modern denominational differences
• (51:25): Non-denominational churches: A new trend
• (55:17): Finding unity in diversity
• (01:04:47): Guidance for finding a new church
• (01:08:47): Conclusion

Resources

• Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
• ​​The funeral of Pope Francis and the papal conclave to follow
• Why I hope you won’t see “Conclave”
• What is the Synod on Synodality?
• Why are there so many denominations in Christianity? • DF
• How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
• Who Am I? Identity • Denison Forum
• Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison

About Dr. Jim Denison

Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. He speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.

About Dr. Ryan Denison

Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and coauthored Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.

About Dr. Mark Turman

Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.

Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.

Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.

Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.

About Denison Forum

Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited. 

Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Denison Forum podcast. I’m Mark, your host for today’s conversation. Want to thank you for pulling up a chair and taking a few minutes to listen as we talk about things that matter, our desire and our goal is to equip you to think live and serve well, to serve Biblically until Jesus comes back.

Wanted to also let you know that we are going to soon have an episode that we call, ask Us anything. We used to call it, ask us, ask Jim anything. But we’ve expanded that to ask me, ask Ryan, ask Jim anything because we wanted to share knowledge with you. So if you have a question that you’re wondering about biblically or about the culture, you can send that to [email protected].

That’s [email protected], and we’ll try to include that in our upcoming episode called Ask Us Anything. And we hope that you’ll share a question or two [00:01:00] again. Our idea is that while you’re busy with other things, sometimes, whether that’s driving, walking, mowing the yard, vacuuming the house, maybe you put your AirPods in and listen as we talk about things that maybe on your mind and hopefully bring you some clarity and connect that to your faith as you walk through today’s culture.

As we talk today I wanna start off by telling you about a person I know he was born into a Catholic family, grew up in that family until his family got disappointed over several different things and dropped out of church. Later as he was coming into his teen years, he had a brush with the United Methodist Church for a little while because his older brother had become involved in some of the student ministry in a local church.

And so he got to tag along a little bit. Even beyond that, he got more involved with a Presbyterian church because he was growing up next to the Presbyterian pastor, grew up with his children [00:02:00] and got involved in that pretty significantly. But then that faded and ultimately when this young man got into high school, he bumped into a guy in the high school parking lot who just happened to be a Southern Baptist.

And it was through that friendship and some other factors that ultimately led this young man to make a commitment, a faith commitment to Jesus’s savior and Lord. Now that may sound strange to you if you’ve always been in a particular part of the Christian Church for more and more people, that story, which is actually my story, is somewhat normative.

And so today we’re gonna talk about why are there so many different. Christian expressions of faith. So many denominations, so many different groups that claim to follow Christ. And most of the ones we’ll talk about, if not all the ones we’ll talk about today, do follow Christ, but they look very different.

So having, having said all that, my conversation partners today [00:03:00] are Dr. Ryan Denison, our editor for senior, editor for Theology, and his dad, who you know well, Dr. Jim Denison. So Ryan, Jim, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, mark. Glad to be with you. You today. Yeah. So we’re looking forward to a good conversation.

We’re gonna just step back and say right off the bat that in some of the questions and things we’ll talk about, Ryan is the subject matter expert way beyond me and certainly way beyond his dad because Ryan has a PhD in church history. Which just puts him leagues above us Jim? On so many levels.

Plus he has perfect kids. Perfect kids. Yep. That’s right. Yeah. We’ll just, you know, defer to him as our expert. But as we jump into this we are also aware from our recent podcast about the death of Pope Francis that our Catholic friends are in the process of selecting a new leader for the c for the Catholic Church.

And Jim, I know you’ve been thinking on this, working on [00:04:00] this, writing on this. Can you bring us up to date a little bit on where that process is? What is called the Conclave? Many people that listened to us may know that there was a recent movie that you wrote about in pointing out some things, encouraging people not to see the movie because of some of the things that are in there.

This podcast may come out after the conclave has finished and the selection of a new pope. Has happened. We don’t know. You were sharing with us a little bit before we started recording that the previous two conclaves actually only took a couple of days. So depending on when they make a decision and when this podcast comes out, this may be a little bit after the fact, but tell us some of the things that we might be helped to know about how this enclave is gonna work and how Catholics are thinking about this process and how we might encourage our Catholic friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ as they walk through the selection of a new leader.

Dr. Jim Denison: Thank you Mark, so much to say [00:05:00] about this. Obviously it’s a massive project. It it’s a thousand year old kind of, practice as it’s currently being utilized. So I’ll just try to pick out a few things that I thought were of greatest interest anyway to me, as I was doing some research on all of this, you go back to 1268 Cardinals were gathering outside of Rome.

It took them three years of voting to try to select a new pope. People got so frustrated they started feeding them bread and water through the windows to try to hasten the process. When that didn’t work, they took the roof off the building theoretically to let the Holy Spirit in, but also to put them in the elements to try to speed them up.

And finally in 1271, they elected a pope Gregory ii, who then changed the whole process and created essentially what we have now. The word conclave is Latin for with a key. And it goes back to that time when they were locked in the room and they weren’t allowed out until they finally selected.

Pope, so that’s why it’s called conclave. It isn’t typically or hasn’t been until 1878 anyway. Typically in the Sistine Chapel, the first time it met, there was [00:06:00] actually 1492, the same year that Columbus crossed the Atlantic. The chapel had been completed a few years prior to that, and then off and on over the years it was there.

Sometimes it was outside Rome. If the Cardinals thought they were especially under threat. From external forces relative to who should be the next Pope. They would they’d gather up and meet outside of Rome in some secretive place in order to do this. And then in the 19th century, they started meeting exclusively in the Sistine Chapel, which is where their meeting starting on Wednesday as they gather officially to begin conclave.

The chapel itself is patterned after Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. The same dimensions. It’s rather small. I’ve been in the Sistine Chapel several times over the years. It’s absolutely stunningly beautiful with Michelangelos frescoes, the paintings that we’re all familiar with there. But it’s really pretty small.

134 feet long, 44 feet wide, 68 feet tall. Supposed to be the dimensions of Solomon’s temple. Mm-hmm. So 133 electors. There are 135 cardinals under the age of [00:07:00] 80, but two ab absented themselves for health reasons. So 133 go in on the first day. They vote once. If they don’t elect a, a pope and it takes two thirds vote, then they vote four times a day for each succeeding day until they select a pope.

They fold the ballots over twice. They bring them in front of fresco of the last judgment. They hand them over to the cardinals that do the vote. They’re called scrutinies that actually do the vote. They’re then burned. Chemicals are put in with them to make black smoke if they haven’t elected a pope and white smoke, if they have.

And then when the Pope is elected, starting in 2005, bells are rung as well to tell the world that a new pope has been elected. Once a cardinal is elected pope, he’s asked if he will take this responsibility. If he does, he’s asked to choose a people name. So I wondered why did they do well that back in 5 33, a priest was elected Pope who had the name of the Greek God Mercury mercurial.

He didn’t want to have a pagan name as Pope. So we changed the name [00:08:00] and from that point forward. Nearly all of the popes took a new name, usually a previous Pope or somebody in history they wanted to emulate, like St. Francis of Assisi for the most recent Pope. And then he will be dressed in people garb.

He’ll be brought out to St. Peter’s balcony there will be in Latin the announcement, we have a new pope and then the Pope will offer a blessing and that’s how the process will conclude. All of that had absolute secrecy. They even scan the room to make certain there are no listening devices that are inside the Sistine Chapel.

They sleep in the Vatican apartments when they’re not voting and are sworn to secrecy until a new Pope is elected at whatever time that might occur. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so many different things to think about in just, like I said, a very historic and, and, just in some ways mysterious process. Mm-hmm. That, that idea of selecting a new name kind of reminds me of those two or three instances in the Bible where people’s names get changed either by Jesus or some other circumstances, [00:09:00] God himself, as it related to Abram and Sarah, I changing their names.

That that idea of taking on a whole new level of responsibility and service and indicating that by the selection of a name. We know that with Peter, we know that with Saul becoming Paul in the New Testament just kind of reminds me of all that. Jim, I wanna go back just for a second. If, you know, I don’t mean to catch you off guard, but this whole idea of the smoke coming out of the chimney.

Mm-hmm. So if I’m understanding this right, there actually is no fireplace that’s sitting there in the Sistine Chapel or, or they have to rebuild this fireplace. And do you have any idea when the smoke signal idea actually came about? 

Dr. Jim Denison: It actually started in 1914, as I read, as my, as my history indicated and they have to build it.

As in the chapel, if you were to walk in prior to conclave, there’s nothing there that can create the kinda smoke we’re talking about. And so they bring in a kind of a furnace sort of a thing and attach it. They had to do this couple days ago, attach it to [00:10:00] pipe, to a pipe that actually goes out the top of the chapel and creates a bit of a chimney outside that is visible to those that are outside at St.

Peters square. And so then they take the ballots and they have chemicals. That they mix with them. One kind of chemical that makes the smoke turn black and another kind of chemical, it’s kind of a powder they use that makes the smoke turn white. So they take all 133 ballots that are folded over twice.

They put ’em in together, they mix this chemical in with them, and then they set it on fire as it were inside this kind of a stove as it were. And that’s what generates the smoke. The smoke doesn’t come out into the chapel. It’s, it’s generated and goes straight up the, up the the chimney as it were until it emerges outside.

But that process itself is just a little more than a hundred years old in terms of using that tradition to indicate the naming of a new pope. In recent times, the smoke white or black wasn’t distinct enough where the crowds were absolutely certain and there actually was some confusion about that.

So they’ve actually changed the chemicals over the year, but starting in 2005, as I [00:11:00] mentioned, they started ringing bells as well. So we don’t really know we have a new pope until we hear bells. Wrong along with the white smoke. That’ll be the absolute signal to the world that the new pope’s been elected.

Dr. Mark Turman: It’s kind of interesting from the standpoint that a very old and historic and mysterious process also has relatively new innovations to it. It does, yeah. Something for all of us as, as Christians and church leaders, to think about that I, I would’ve thought that that tradition would’ve been a lot older mm-hmm.

Than just a little over a hundred years. Ryan, this is really right down your wheelhouse. And for many, many Christians around the world who practice a Catholic faith, this whole process is just very, very important in their hearts and minds right now for others who are Christians but not practicing a Catholic faith, this may be of little consequence.

I. And sometimes just confusing. But if we go back to the birth of the church in the Book of Acts, the day of Pentecost is typically recognized by [00:12:00] Christians as to the birth of the church and soon to be celebrated. In the season that we’re in right now, following Easter we have a pretty clear indication of when that Pentecost would’ve happened in the birth of the church.

I’m gonna ask you to do something that’s a little bit challenging, which is to just build us a short skeleton of church history with the, what I would call the biggest milestones or pivot points to just kind of create a framework of how we’re gonna talk about how we got to the place where there are so many different groups and so many different expressions of Christian faith.

We’ll talk at the end about whether or not that’s a good or bad thing in some ways. But can you kind of just create a context for us around the big milestones as you would present them? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think Pentecost is a great place to start. And that’s around 30, 33 ad somewhere in that, in that kind of realm.

And by that point you’ve got, you know, you’ve got the first believers that go from hiding in a [00:13:00] room to going out and preaching the gospel. And from there the church really just takes off. And for the next 300 years or so, the better part of the next 300 years they’ll be largely a persecuted faith.

At first, they were persecuted by the Jews and then they were persecuted by the Romans. And to the point where a lot of the church hierarchy that defines the Catholic church today was actually put in place to help combat heresy because there was, because of persecution and because of heresy, heretical movements within the church, they’re really the, having that structure, that kind of top down structure with bishops and the Pope and all that kinda stuff really was the best way for the church to protect Orthodox thought for those first few centuries.

And then I. Once the church is legalized and can begin meeting and can begin to actually publicly do church like we do it today, where it’s more out in the open and where they don’t have to worry about, you know, soldiers coming in, arresting everybody while they’re meeting for church. You start to see councils kind of really start to come together to settle a lot of this stuff.

Following the, you know, following time of Constantine and the [00:14:00] ecumenical councils go over to really kind of define a lot of theology and where it’s important for the development of denominations is that for the most part, even. By 300, there was largely an eastern church and a western church. It wasn’t nearly as defined as it would become but as the church, kind of as Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople or started that process.

And as this, the character of the church has starts, started to develop the Western church, which is what became the Roman Catholic Church. They pretty much relied on Tartan’s understanding that he established in the two hundreds to try and make sure that like for a lot of their theology, it was pretty much set.

Then in the east, however, they were much more pro. That’s where a lot of the academic centers for the Roman Empire were. And so most of the ecumenical councils early on were much more eastern than Western, where they debated the nuances of theology. They spent a lot of time going over, what I would call non-essentials in a lot of ways.

They established a lot of essentials. The [00:15:00] podcast we had recently where it talked about the Nice creed is a great example of a lot of the kind of the core theology that was established during that time. But a lot of that was more debated in the east than the west. And over time is when you get into the 400, you start to see and the barbarians start to invade Rome and the western part of the empire.

You start to see the Roman side of that with the Pope really kind of go more into survival mode, whereas the east was kind of free to continue their debates and after the Romans end up sacking Rome and all that you end up starting to get a more geographically distinct area and that’s where you really start to see almost the Eastern and western churches start to develop.

Dr. Mark Turman: Let me, let me pause you right there. And just for my own clarity here, east and west, as defined by East and West, from Rome or Constantinople or kind of that general demarcation, that’s when we start talking about east and west. We are talking about something geographic and we are talking about something geographic from Rome going either direction, right?

Dr. Ryan Denison: Very much [00:16:00] so you have a kind of, for a while kind of the Roman Empire itself was split between east and west. And so that kind of with the ca with Rome saying kind of the capital of the Western empire and Constance and PLE being the capital of the Eastern Empire. And in the four hundreds, Rome was sacked by a barbarian tribe and kind of fell.

And then at that point, Constantinople kind of became the only Roman empire. While the west still kind of claimed that title the church started to take on more and more authority there. And the Pope tried to exercise more and more authority there, and they would continue to grow apart until around 10 54 when we get to something called the Great Schism.

And there was a lot kind of leading up to that. It’s really kind of the first official denominational split you could say in church history in a lot of ways. Where the east and West were geographically distinct. They were culturally distinct, but the Pope still claimed authority over all of it.

And in the eight hundreds, the Western Church changed something in the ING Creed. They added what’s called the Phil Yole clause, which is [00:17:00] where it says that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the father and the son rather than just the father. That yeas considered that heresy. For the West, it became orthodoxy.

But as much as anything, I think the East was just kind of angry that the West changed official theology without consulting them. And it kind of, really sort of typified a lot of the problems you’re seeing here. Never happened. No. No, never. What did you say, Jim? 

Dr. Jim Denison: No. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Denison: Now what’d you say, Jim? I just said that never happens today.

Yeah. Never happens in the after es, that’s for sure. Now, 

Dr. Mark Turman: when you, when you said that Ryan, I could just imagine all kinds of church pastors and elders and deacons, all kinds of of church people just laughing, going of course that’s too many times the way it happens in church. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: A hundred percent. I mean, really, like it’s an important issue, but it was not the issue.

I don’t think it became kind of the, it kind of became the thing they could animate the rest of their division around. And so for about 200 years it got them growing apart. And then in 10 54, the patriarch of [00:18:00] Constantinople says, no one speaks Latin anymore in the East. We’re not doing mass in Latin anymore, so we’re gonna do it in Greek.

Because that’s what everyone in Constantinople spoke and the Pope didn’t like that. And so he said, no, no, you gotta keep doing it Latin. That nobody in Europe spoke Latin outside the church. Didn’t matter either at this point apparently, but mm-hmm. That’s neither here nor there. And so the Pope sends kind of a cardinal over to sort of negotiate peace by which he meant to make sure that they do what I’m telling them to.

And that ended up blowing up where the cardinal of the Pope sent walks into Sanc to Sophia in the middle of Mass and says, everyone who disagrees with the Pope is now excommunicated, which, and their theology meant you’re going to hell. Because salvation is sort of the churches to give or take away.

And then five days later, the east excommunicate everyone to the west. And officially it stayed like that until 1965 when after Vatican two, kind of the Pope and the patriarchy of concerts, noble kind of got back together and said, okay, we no longer officially think y’all are going to hell. [00:19:00] And that kind of officially ended that.

Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Beyond that, there was a brief period of time in the fourth crusades where they were reunited when sort of the, the prince of, of content de Noble got ousted by one of his brothers. He tried to hire the western crusading army, said I’ll pay for you to go to the holy land if you come and put me back in power.

They came, did. So he didn’t have the funds to actually do that. So then they just sat Constantinople and for about 60 years the Pope was like, Hey, we’re one church again. Kinda like making good out of this. And then, constantinople was retaken by Eastern armies again and then kind of the division went back.

But that’s kind of like, that’s called the Great Schism in 10 54 because that’s when the division that had been building for centuries by this point really kind of became official. And that’s when you see the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church. 

Dr. Jim Denison: Okay. And by the way, Constantinople is stanbul today.

For anybody that’s wondering how that works, it becomes Constantinople and Byzantium. And then when it fell to the Muslim advance it, it was renamed as Stanbul and that’s what it’s called today. Yeah. It’s a fascinating city. It’s a city on [00:20:00] places, fascinat, it’s across a strai there and it’s a really remarkable place to be.

And how you Sophia the church that Ryan’s referring to, it’s now a Muslim mosque, but it is an amazing thing to visit. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Christian history. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Just stunning. And got to, got to go there for the first time about six months ago. It just is a stunning place. Ryan, a lot of people are like, okay, that’s way more than I ever knew or wanted to know in some cases.

That’s the downside of having 

Dr. Ryan Denison: a church historian kind of lead that part of the conversation. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Jump ahead another 500 years to this thing called Martin Luther in the Protestant Reformation. And how that turns yet again into more di more split, more diversification. More disunity bring us up to speed to another 500 years.

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah. And so by the time of Martin Luther in the 15, early 15 hundreds, you’ve again got these forces that have been building over time. And I think this is one of, when we think about the denominational splits even today, I think what’s really important to understand is that very rarely is it one incident that just without [00:21:00] anything leading up to it is sort of the breaking point by which, at which point we see division that’s, that’s really not ever the case.

And so it’s that way with, even with the reformation. Where for the a hundred, 200 years leading up to that, you’ve got other reformers named John Huss and people like that, that were pushing for the exact same things as Luther in a lot of ways. But the Catholic church had the authority to persecute them, whereas Luther had the protection of the, of the German princes.

And so when he posts his 95 thesis outlining all the ways that he sees indulgences, which were the, the church attempting to build a lot of their architecture, pay for a lot of their art by selling, get outta purgatory free cards essentially not free, the slogan was when the coin of the coffer rings the soul from Purgatory Springs is kind of the idea they had back then.

And so Luther was watching a lot of the people in his area. Kind of like give all this money to the church and return for something that he didn’t think made sense to be theologically accurate. So he started pushing against that. The church responds, he [00:22:00] responds. Luther was very he had very little problem with confrontation and conflict, and I think to put it kindly and so put it 

Dr. Mark Turman: mildly.

Yeah. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah. And so he starts pushing for that. And then in Germany because the Holy Roman Empire needed the German’s help, the German prince’s help to fight against the, the Turkish forces and the Muslim forces. They gave Luther and other reformers a lot more freedom to kind of pursue their own version of Christianity because they had the protection of German princes.

And mm-hmm. In that context, you see Luther start it and then a guy named Lahan comes along later who worked with Luther and kind of codifies everything, puts it into what we would think of a lot of as Protestant history today. But within that, when Luther first questions that the authority of the Pope and kind of goes back to this SOLAS script only scripture idea that sparks a lot of other people to do the same.

And so that’s when you start to see like John Calvin start to come up. And a lot of the origins for the other denominations we see today within Protestantism kind of came out of this thought of, okay, if, if scripture alone is the [00:23:00] authority here, then on these issues where we interpret scripture differently, what do we do?

And a lot of times that revolved around Lord Supper. Other times it revolved around baptism, but in a lot of ways you start to see within Protestantism, you start to see splits a lot more, a lot more quickly because there’s not this overarching hierarchy making sure everyone is on the same page. And so a lot of the denominations we have today in the Protestant version, in the Protestant form of Christian, of Christianity are kind of the result of that still.

And we see that kind of play out again, if I jump another few hundred years in advance, like the first and second grade awakenings are where you see Baptist and Methodists really start to take off and other denominations start to start to come into play more in the West. And but a lot of that kind of just, it goes back to that basic idea of the fundamental split between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism is revolves around kind of Luther’s idea of soul of scriptura.

And if scriptural alone is our highest authority for how we understand God and theology, then [00:24:00] that. Is a fundamental difference between the Catholic version where they elevate tradition which is in their understanding it’s the official understanding of scripture is the way that they would define tradition, right?

And so in the Catholic faith, that stands of, of equal value to to the Bible itself. And in Protestantism wheeling more to the Bible alone. And then the Holy Spirit’s kind of interpretation of that scripture in your life, okay? Is sort of the foundations. 

Dr. Mark Turman: All right that is okay. That’s a lot.

Okay so I suspect that our audience might want to take a breather. So we’re gonna step aside here for a moment. Let you catch your breath, kinda let everything that Ryan has just shared, kind of just sink in. And then we’re gonna come back and try to bring this even further into today’s world and how we have so many different expressions of Christianity.

We’ll be right back. We are back talking about how did we get to the place where there are so many different denominations and groups that express Christianity in different ways, [00:25:00] sometimes just outright conflicting ways. Many of you will recognize the name Oswald Chambers here in early May. One of his devotionals, he writes a little bit I wanted to quote from him.

Oswald Chamber said, we are called to present liberty for the conscience of others, not to bring them liberty for their thoughts, for their own thoughts and opinions. Going on Chamber says, always measure your life solely by the standards of Jesus. It takes God a long time to get us to stop thinking.

Unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong. That somehow speaks to the reality of so many different expressions of Christianity. Jim, as Ryan was laying out the last 2000 years of church history and some of the places where disagreements and divides have really been noted in history, you had a couple of thoughts you wanted to share about how all of this actually transpired and is still [00:26:00] informing the way different groups express their faith.

Share with us what you’re thinking. 

Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, there’s a, I think a way of understanding the way that this thing moves forward as it evolves from the reformation forward. That’s been helpful to me over the years, and as I’ve used this to kind of explain this to people that are considering joining our church or whatnot, it perhaps gives some kind of clarity as well.

As Ryan says, once you get to Sola scripture, only the scriptures. Then you’ve gotta ask yourself, all right, now what does that mean? As the Holy Spirit is leading me in the Catholic tradition, the belief still is today that the Spirit uses the traditions of the church to interpret and apply as Word.

They obviously also believe, and depending on the Holy Spirit, they just believe that the Spirit speaks through the conclave, as would be the case in electing the Pope or speaks through the traditions of the church. Whereas the Protestant move is more the Spirit speaking directly to us and then through us you’re gonna get a lot of different opinions if you don’t have one set of traditions by which to measure everything.

And it falls into two broad categories. The one side called the Magisterial Reformation, because these are the people [00:27:00] like Luther that are protected by the magistrates basically come to the position. We’re going to keep everything that the Catholic Church is doing unless it is expressly unbiblical. 

Dr. Mark Turman: And 

Dr. Jim Denison: where we think it’s unbiblical, we’re going to change it as the spirit leads us.

There’s another group that comes along called the Radical Reformers Baptist, come outta this group who say, we’re only going to keep what the Catholic Church does. If it is expressly biblical, it’s not enough for it not to be unbiblical. It has to actually be taught in the Bible. Baptism is an, is an example.

The Magister reformers Lutherans, the church of England. Eventually you think of of Episcopalians. You think of Presbyterians today in this context, kept the practice of baptizing infants as the Catholic church did it because the Bible nowhere forbids it. Now, where does it say thou shalt not sprinkle babies, but they typically change the meaning from the washing away of inherited sin to the dedication of a child to God.

The radical reformers come along and say nowhere in the New Testament does [00:28:00] anybody ever sprinkle a baby. The only baptisms we find are the immersion of believers. So we’re gonna go back to immersing believers. A lot of them became known as Anabaptist, meaning re baptizers. And so you have the immersion of believers because that’s how the New Testament seems to expressly teach baptism.

So you’ve got these two ways of doing this well, that applies to the Lord’s Supper, that applies to images in the church, that applies to iconography. And a lot of the liturgies of the church, you, you’ll see a Presbyterian church, for instance, having far more liturgy than a Baptist church would. It’s because they’re following Catholic tradition elicits unbiblical.

And where it is, they rephrase it and recast it in more the radical that come along. The Bible churches, the Baptist churches, a lot of the non-denominational churches that only do what we think the Bible expressly does teach. All of that is the Holy Spirit is leading us to interpret and apply his word.

So those are kind of the two categories. So the magisterial and the radical based on how they understood the way to move forward beyond the Catholic Church [00:29:00] itself. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. I think I have that under my belt at this point. Really helpful. But Ryan, you were saying that there was a particular thought process about, as the, as these two different channels of reform and revival were coming along the idea of how do we decide what to keep and what to let go there, there was additional thought about how that process unfolded.

Can you share that with us? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that distinction between magisterial and, and radical reformers is really important as well. And a lot of what, but if you look at it, what a lot of what kind of ended up dividing them between those categories where it came back to something of a risk analysis where a lot of the magisterial reformers, particularly with baptism they had so many of the people they were trying to lead into this new understanding of the bible, new understanding of the faith.

Had grown up in a context where baptism was taught to be an essential component of salvation. And so if they didn’t sprinkle their kids, if they didn’t baptize [00:30:00] their kids as infants and their child died before being able to profess faith, the, there was a real thought that that child might end up going to hell.

While theologically they said that wasn’t the case. And I think that theologically, they agreed with the end about this in a lot of ways. You’re one, if you’re kind of weighing the eternal fate of your child versus when to have them baptized. It’s real easy to kind of think maybe we should just keep sprinkling the babies just in case.

And just in case, I think that sort of thing really goes into a lot of, kind of these differences where so much of it came back to just how far can you push people before they just say, this is too much change and we’re done with it. Mm-hmm. And that line is really kind of that different cultures and different pockets had different, different understandings of where that line existed, that different reformers had different, different abilities to help people get farther down.

That path really goes into a lot of the, of the denominational splits we saw in the Reformation period. And a lot of what we continue to see throughout church history really goes back to how [00:31:00] far are people, how much change are people willing to tolerate before they say it’s too much? 

Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Really good insight. And you know, these things are not as, as y’all have already pointed out, these things are more complicated than we think this is not just a few people getting upset about something and, you know, picking up, walking down the, the road and starting in another building a few miles down the road.

And as we’ve also pointed out many of these changes and, and many of these divisions have built up, built up over not just decades, but often over centuries until they become formalized in terms of quote unquote church schisms or splits. Let’s bring this forward even a little bit further.

So I shared at the beginning that part of my story starts in the Roman Catholic Church for the first decade of my life, and then into the Protestant world. Ryan, you mentioned earlier that in 1965, kind of an as an outgrowth and application of what’s called Vatican two, there was [00:32:00] this. Somewhat of a reuniting of the Eastern and western expressions of the Catholic church.

There was also some outgrowth in this relative to Protestants. And even today, you know, you talk about whether or not this applies, I, I help plant a church in the late nineties, in the North Dallas suburbs. The number one question I had when people were considering our church is, do I have to be baptized again?

Many of them had come into the North Dallas area from different parts of the country, sometimes different parts of the world. Many of them had been baptized as babies by their parents. And I could tell you almost without exception, the number one reason people did not join our church is because if in our church’s practice, if they had not been baptized by immersion after.

Their conversion and understanding of faith, then we would ask them to be baptized. And that would [00:33:00] become a deal breaker for many of them, sometimes theologically, more oftentimes it was relationally. They thought that if they were rebaptized, even though they understood what we were telling them, they actually agreed with what we were telling them.

They thought it would be offensive to their parents or to their extended family. And that was a reason to not participate in our church which was oftentimes really frustrating. All that to say these things really do have present day impact and we, we are the current generation holding the. The truths of faith and the batons of history and the, and the, and the bonds of history that we continue to live these things out.

Jim, bring us up to speed relative to give us a short rundown, if you can, of this thing called Vatican two. How it actually finds expression in the 1960s is, gets connected to things like the, the presidential [00:34:00] campaign of JFK in 1960. Give us a little bit of insight into that moment.

Dr. Jim Denison: Absolutely. So in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic hierarchy comes together and codifies a very official kind of, what wouldn’t say stiffening of the spine as it were kind of a redoubling down as it were on the Catholic traditions of their, of their beliefs and, and the beliefs that the Protestants are wrong, absolutely, categorically wrong.

It’s what’s called the Counter Reformation, and it’s their response to the. Reformation, it leads in some ways to inquisition. It leads to all sorts of things as there’s a, a, a really vehement sort of kind of war going on as it were between, and sometimes actual wars going on between. I’m thinking of the 30 years war between the Catholics and the Protestants.

And so this goes forward for centuries now, and you’re at a place even in the United States where you’ve got states that are much more dominated by Catholics and others, much more dominated by Protestants. And you almost get into church states, as it were, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Baptist in Rhode [00:35:00] Island and so forth, Maryland and, and, and a more Catholic expression and lots of division between all of these things.

This stuff starts moving into politics as well. You have Al Smith back in the early part of the 20th century, the first Catholic nominee for a president, and in large part was defeated because he was a Catholic. Nominee for president. And the question, the fear that if he were president, the Vatican would be running the United States.

And so we’ve got the separation of church and state here. What does that mean relative to the Catholics expression and all of that? Lots of factors that move forward into the early part of the 1960s when the church comes together in what’s called Vatican Council too, to open the doors of the church as the phrase is used.

It went a whole lot further than a lot of folk thought it would go initially in some of the reforms of the church. Not requiring Latin at the mass, for instance. Allowing lay people to be much more involved in the organization and the leadership of the church and had been the case previously, giving women much more of a role in the church than had been the case, but especially.

Lessening the opposition with [00:36:00] Protestants lowering the, the walls of opposition between Catholic and Protestant. It had been the official position of the church, although I don’t think this was actually what a lot of Catholics would’ve said they believed. But the official position was all the way back to the Protestant reformation, that Protestants were excommunicated from God’s people from the church.

That was changed in Vatican two, and with a lot of the documents came out of that a, a much more open kind of spirit to the larger Protestant world and, and are trying to move forward more toward unity. Not all Protestants responded as I think they should have to Vatican two, but a lot did. And from that point forward, over the last 50 years, we’ve seen a great deal more ecumenism between Protestant and Catholic than had been the case prior to Vatican two John Cardinal Newhouse and Charles Colson back in the seventies, working together toward a, a new understanding of Evangelical and Catholic as well.

A lot of spiritual awakenings within the Catholic tradition toward kind of evangelical belief in the [00:37:00] in the primacy of a spiritual rebirth and the essential commitment to faith through scripture. And an emphasis on the teaching of scripture that comes out of Vatican two as well. When we take people to Israel, as you know, mark, we often retrace the Osa the way of suffering in the 14 stations of the cross.

Pope John Paul II actually released a biblical 14 stations of the cross that doesn’t utilize some of the traditions that are in the the historic stations of the cross with Veronica and so forth. And you’ve seen a much more kind of evangelical movement in the Catholic church. Some of this, I’ll add this quickly, has also been a response to a massive movement in Latin America toward evangelicalism out of the Catholic Church.

One of the reasons Pope Francis was so important coming from Argentina, the first Latin pope was a way of trying to rebuild bridges in the in the third world and in Latin and South America in response to the charismatic movement and some movement out of the church and to more of an evangelical expression.

So all that to say, it’s much more [00:38:00] unusual today to hear somebody come along and say, Catholics aren’t believers, or Protestants aren’t believers than would’ve been the case prior to Vatican two. And for that, I think we can be extremely grateful on both sides of this. Jesus in John 17 is praying that we would be one, so the world would believe the Father sent the Son.

I think he’s still praying for that, and we need to join him in that prayer and join him in making that prayer a reality in every good way that we can. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So important and, and I, this is part of my lived experience. I don’t know exactly how this played out in my extended family, but I know that my parents in the late 1960s, early seventies, when they decided to, to leave.

And stop practicing their Catholic faith. Part of it was not necessarily that they disagreed with Vatican two, but they didn’t understand it and they felt confused. And kind of what Ryan referenced a little bit ago is how far can you press people before they’re just like, it’s too much change and it’s too fast.

Mm-hmm. And in that season they felt it sounds like they’re changing a bunch of the core [00:39:00] teachings. They also had, at that point in their life, the fir for the first time there was a, a change in local church leadership and they had a pastor that came in, a priest that would lead the church that was younger than them.

So that was new. And it just, for them, it just felt like in some ways, too much change, too fast. So Ryan, I wanna get you to comment as we kind of bring this more into current day experience. As your dad pointed out, and, and this was a conversation back in the eighties when I started to become influenced by Protestant Baptist Christians.

A couple of things started swirling around sometimes contentious conversations about are Catholics, Christians, or are are Baptist actually Christians? That conversation went back and forth, literally in my own living room. We also had conversations about whether or not I was capable of reading and interpreting the Bible for myself.

Mm-hmm. Or if I, you know, my mother and dad came from the Catholic tradition. [00:40:00] No, the church instructs and interprets the scripture to us. We are not gifted and capable of doing that on our own, very, very different perspectives relative to just reading the Bible. And in the years since I’ve been a pastor and have pastored in this area north of Dallas it’s been kind of interesting.

We had, we would have Catholic brothers and sisters come to our church for Bible study with us. And they were doing some of their own personal and small group bible studies, which never seemed to happen in the Roman Catholic church that I grew up in. So all that to say Ryan give us, we now kind of see people talking in three big buckets in the United States.

We talk about Catholic believers and what seems to be a small contingent of Eastern Orthodox kind of get grouped with the Roman Catholics. Then we have this big bucket that we call mainline churches, and then we have this other bucket called evangelical churches. [00:41:00] Is that a helpful way of thinking about where we are today?

Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it still has its place because I’m not sure their differences are still vast enough between the way that on a day-to-day level, a lot of these what church looks like when you’re part of it between these nominations, that I do think it’s helpful to keep the categories. I think what’s real important though is just to understand that at the end of the day, it comes back to what you believe about Jesus.

And on the essentials, the official teachings of all th in, within all three of those buckets is Christian. And I think where, what’s interesting is you look at it historically, especially in the 19 hundreds and beyond, and post Vatican two especially. Really what kind of has helped bridge a lot of those divides is missions where church, where different denominations, what’s in missionaries to the same place, they end up at times competing with one another.

But more often than not, they, there’s also a lot of instances where they end up realizing we can help each other here and [00:42:00] like we’re all after the same mission here. And it’s, it’s interesting like kind of that that Christ prayer that we would be one really finds its fulfillment when we’re doing the great commission.

And when we kind of get back to simplifying the gospel to focus on the essentials, we realize we have a lot more in common when it comes to the important stuff. And so I do think it’s helpful to keep those categories in mind for just understanding that there are differences and that to an extent it’s okay if there’s differences.

But the reason it’s okay is because in the essentials, we agree. And even within, I, I think that’s probably, there’s less disagreement on a lot of things probably between kind of within Protestantism than within Protestants and Roman Catholics still because there are still some big differences there.

But at the end of the day, when it comes back to the core teachings of who is Jesus and what does he call this to do, there’s a lot of agreement there. And that becomes most clear when we engage in missions together. So as we think about how to move forward as a culture to kind of get the most out of denominations without kind of amplifying the, the [00:43:00] downsides of those, I think it is helpful to remember that the more often we can work together to share the gospel, the easier it gets to realize we are part of one big family.

Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Mark, I add real quickly if I could, my gratitude for the way the Catholic Church, as I said in our last podcast, continues in so many ways to be as committed to biblical authority and to biblical morality as we would hope we would be As Conservative Baptist, I was in a meeting last night with a group of folks in our church and one of the ladies in the group has a PhD in medical ethics.

She comes out of a Baptist tradition. Her whole life has been in that. She now works as a chaplain at a Catholic hospital system here in our town. And she was expressing to me last night how grateful she is for the morality of that Catholic system and the way that they apply that morality to medical ethics, how they’ve endorsed her and welcomed her, but their stance on abortion, their stance on the value of, of life, all the way to natural death, the way in which they see themselves as an expression of the Christian Ministry of Healing.

So we have this Baptist trained with three seminary degrees, Baptist seminary [00:44:00] degrees, very happy to be working in a Catholic hospital system because of the vast overlap that we have relative to biblical morality, especially in the context of, of medical ethics. And I just was rejoicing that last night.

Yeah. And, and so grateful that we can continue to make common cause in so many ways. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re gonna step aside for a another moment. Let you as our listeners, catch your breath and we’re gonna get a cough drop for ourselves. And then when we come back in a moment, Jim, I’m gonna ask you to help us define a little bit better, as Ryan was alluding to, the difference between essentials and non-essentials when it comes to our expressions of faith.

And we’ll try to bring this conversation and land it into some applications for how all of us can continue to walk this out together from different parts of the Christian family. We’ll be right back.

All right, we’re back. As we continue our conversation about how we got to the place of so many different [00:45:00] Christian denominations and groups, so many different. Expressions of the Christian faith across history and even today. And it just seems like we’re continuing to struggle. I just have the, the story to share.

We’re recording this podcast on a Tuesday, two days ago, on a Sunday in the town in which I live. The most notable story was the disbanding of a church that has operated in our community for around 130 years. This past Sunday, the first Presbyterian church, which was a part of the what’s called the PCUS, a side of the Presbyterian denomination, decided to disband because the membership had gotten down to less than 10 or 15 people.

And so it’s a pretty big reality here in our community that churches do sometimes actually cease to exist. For a lot of reasons, but this one was for a complicated set of [00:46:00] circumstances. But Jim wanted to come back with that kind of in the context to talk about how do we think about the differences within Christian groups and how do we think through?

Part of one of my questions wanted to be, are there a handful of issues that just seem to be over and over again, the reasons we’ve already talked about baptism. We’ve talked about the practice of communion in Lord’s Supper. We’ve talked about views of scripture. Our, our groups almost consistently splitting because of this same set of five or six issues.

And how do we evaluate those issues relative to the essentials of the Christian faith? Relative to important, but secondary issues that are not determinative of things like salvation. 

Dr. Jim Denison: We all have that challenge. We all do. Even in families, you have red lines, you know, things that we’re just unwilling to cross in all relationships.

We have those things I’ll put up with that. I can’t put up with that. I heard years ago some really good marriage advice, which [00:47:00] was to make a list of the things you’re willing to forgive. And then whenever your spouse does one of the things on the list, remember that you already chose to forgive that.

Now, some things you can’t forgive obviously, and there are other things that you can that’s gonna be the case inside Christian theology as well. We all have those red lines. We have places that we just can’t go past from my self personally, because I believe salvation is by grace through faith.

That’s a red line for me. I believe you have to trust in Christ as your savior and Lord in some way by which that is experienced in order to have a personal relationship with God. I don’t, therefore, I’m therefore not a Christian Universalist who thinks everybody goes to heaven because of what Jesus did, or just a general universalist who says everybody goes to heaven regardless of what Jesus did.

That to me would be a red line in terms of Christian cooperation. On the other hand, I don’t think baptism is essential to salvation, and so I can cooperate fully with someone who has a different baptism theology than I do well historically. The Church of Christ would have a difference there. Their understanding, baptism does participate in salvation.[00:48:00] 

They would see that as essential. And so they would say that that is a red line and they, it’d be different now, but historically they would not have cooperated as I would with someone who does infant baptism because that for them is a red line, baptism by immersion. And so we all have these lines of what we consider to be essential.

For me, the essentials have to do with Jesus. Do I believe he is the divine son of God? Do I believe he rose from the dead? Do I believe that he is my savior and Lord have I trusted him as my savior and Lord, if I’ve done that, that to me is the essential. Then the rest of it we can figure out and work out as we kind of come down the way.

And so that’s my red line as it were. But as I say, others have them as well in terms of what actually divides churches, my experience has been, it’s very seldom around these massive essential issues. As Ran said earlier, it’s often more cultural, it’s often more political, it’s often more relational in nature.

Oftentimes theological issues get blamed for issues that are far more relational or cultural than they were [00:49:00] essentially. Theological, at least in their beginning. It can be families against families inside a church that split over the color of the carpet in the new building. It can be things that have much less to do with the issue.

That’s the so-called presenting issue than it is the underlying issue. Very quick example, the first church I pastored, we were in the midst of a building renovation and needed to put in a new water fountain. We had voted on about a hundred thousand dollars project unanimously, which was a massive project for us at that point, at the life of this pretty small church.

Now it came to picking up the color of the water cooler and we got into division. Over what color it should be. Somebody wanted green and somebody else said I think green’s ugly. To which the first person said the color of the appliances and my kitchen is green. Do you think my kitchen’s ugly?

And it kind of go back and forth a little bit. It kind of got into some family stuff that had some history and all of that. And as the pastor, this my first pastor, I kind of had to step into some of this and kinda get in front of it a little bit. I once pastored a church with 10,000 [00:50:00] members that in its history, wanted to replace the carpet in the building.

It had been gold carpet because the pastor that had built the building wanted gold to be streets of gold. That was hard to maintain. That was really hard to keep clean. And so they wanted to put in maroon carpet, which would represent the blood of Christ that was so divisive that the maroon carpet wound up being in the warehouse for a year.

And then they came along and put gold striping the Greek key on the edges of the maroon carpet, and they were therefore able to put it on the, and put it down. And that was the carpet we had in the sanctuary. And that was in a very large, very sophisticated church where tradition became divisive in the life of the church.

It can happen to all of us. In my experience, mark very seldom over massive essentials as much more of a relational issues and historical issues. And I, I would say. 

Dr. Mark Turman: That’s just really hard. Some, for some reason, just really hard for human beings to kind of keep all of that really in perspective. And part partly for the reason doing this podcast today is to try to help us all [00:51:00] think through that.

Ryan, I wanted to come around and just get you to comment for a minute. It seems like the whole time that I’ve been in ministry, which is now almost 40 years, astoundingly to me but we he have seen started kindergarten, didn’t you, 

Dr. Jim Denison: mark? 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. It start, it must have started in kindergarten. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, kinda like Samuel, you and me both, you know, from, yeah. From the, from the earliest days of his, you know, preschool years we brought to the temple as babies and we just started serving them. That’s awesome. But Ryan, we, we have seen in the last number of decades, at least 30 years the rapid rise prevalence of what is sometimes referred to as the non-denominational church, particularly in the evangelical world.

I guess probably exclusive to the evangelical world as compared to Catholic or mainline. This is in some ways some of the, some of the fastest growing churches. Some of the largest churches, particularly in the United States are in this category of non-denominational church. How do you see this fitting into what [00:52:00] we’ve been talking about and, and is, is, is the rise of the non-denominational church a good thing in your view?

Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it can go both ways depending on how they do the non-denominational aspect of that. I think what’s helpful to remember even going back to kind of what my dad was just talking about is that non-essential does not mean non-important. And I think that’s kind of where you see a lot of the non-denominational stuff come into play is that there is disagreement on things about which people are.

People assign a level of genuine importance. Maybe they understand it. Doesn level doesn’t rise to the level of essentials of the faith, but it’s still really important to them. And as a result, when those things are called into question, it’s really easy for the conflict to escalate beyond what it deserves.

And so I think a lot of the non-denominational stuff kind of rose around the times when within, whether it was the Baptist tradition or other traditions, you start to see a lot of friction and a lot of fights over things that just got [00:53:00] beyond their level of importance of what they should have been.

And so the non-denominational approach was almost an attempt to just start from scratch, leave all that conflict behind and say, we’re just gonna go back to following the Bible. And what you see is they end up looking a lot like denominational churches and everything, but name a lot of non a lot of non-denominational churches actually look a lot like Baptist churches in a lot of ways.

Because one of the core. Historical traditions within Baptist belief is that local church autonomy is a really important thing. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: And non-denominational churches have, have, have really embraced that. Where I think you start to, and I think it’s good in the sense that it really does give people kind of a blank slate where they can take the good and kind of leave behind whatever had become bad and kind of really start a church that follows God the way they feel like they’re supposed to follow God.

It’s sad that they feel like they have to leave the traditions to do that. And I think at times it’s almost, it’s kind of the easy way out [00:54:00] versus really kind of resolving those conflicts within the denomination. And also just because you claim claim to be non-denominational doesn’t mean you’re gonna avoid conflict.

It just means you’re gonna get to create your own versions of conflict. And I do think that’s kind of what we’ve seen since those have become more prevalent is that they’re not free of a lot of the problems. They just have the freedom to create their own problems. And oftentimes there, there’s some great churches though, because there is something, there is a freedom that comes with being able to almost start fresh that a lot of them have taken advantage of in some really great ways.

And again, it kind of goes back to the end of the day. As long as your denominational affiliation doesn’t keep you from being able to work with other Christians, then I don’t think there’s a problem to it. A lot of times it’s just different ways to express your faith, different ways to practice your faith that fit better with your understanding and your personality and the way that God has wired you.

As long as we can work together to further the kingdom, then all that’s fine. But I think that’s kind of where we’ve seen the rise of non-denominational churches [00:55:00] is largely from that idea of let’s just see if we can start over and leave all that baggage behind and go back to being the church’s God has called us to be.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and in some ways really refreshing, but like you said, we all tend to carry our baggage with us, even if we think we put it down. And you know, I’ve always had this kind of idea that if we, if we eliminated all of the structures that we’ve inherited in faith, all the denominations, all the traditions, if we did away with them tomorrow, the next day after that, we would start rebuilding them because of Jim, what you said earlier, which is this absolute passion of Jesus to bring us together as one body of faith, as one body of Christ to have this oneness in this unity.

That we know we will experience in heaven. That all of these things that seem potentially so important to us now will take on their proper place and we will know how to live in unity [00:56:00] with Christ and with each other when we are in heaven. We know that that’s coming. Jim, I wanted to get a, a pastoral word of comfort from you very quickly before we finish up, which is, is it just Christians that find a way to divide over all these things and to create their unique expressions of faith?

Or does this happen in other faith systems like Islam or Hinduism? Is it just Christians that are struggling to be unified in their faith, or does it happen with other groups that are not Christian? 

Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, as you know, mark, the answer is categorically. It happens across the board and the Muslim world, you have the Shiite and the Sunni, for instance.

They go back very early in their history and are massively at odds with one another. Right now, you see the Iranians as the Shiites. You see the Saudis as the Sunni and all the conflict that’s in the midst of that. Within Judaism, you have orthodox, conservative and reform. And then even within those broad categories, there are differences as well.

There are various ways. There are four different schools within Buddhism. By which Buddhism is understood and [00:57:00] expressed in a variety of different expressions and Hinduism and so forth. And so a tradition has to be really small before it starts moving into a place where it has different personalities that eventually get expressed in these different ways.

But within the Christian tradition, I would add this very quickly. One of the ways I think God redeems the differences we’ve been talking about today is by using them to reach people in ways that are somewhat unique to that tradition. The non-denominational move, and even denominational churches that aren’t using denominational names anymore, like Baptist churches that don’t call them Saddleback Church, it doesn’t call itself a Baptist church, even though it is are can sometimes a way of removing a barrier to non-Christians who don’t think they can go to that church unless they’re Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever.

It’s kinda like putting a denomination to a shopping mall and then people think gosh, I can’t shop there unless I’m a Lutheran because that’s South Side Lutheran Mall, or so forth. But if it’s just South Side Mall, then anybody can shop there. The non-denominational move can in some ways.

Lesson barriers. As I said to those that don’t have a church [00:58:00] tradition, that can be a good thing. Over the years, I’ve seen traditions kind of evolve around personalities that reach out more effectively to individuals within that personality. Everything we know, we know through either the intuitive, the practical, or the rational.

We like people intuitively. We start our chiropractically, we do math rationally. If I’m rationally wired. I might be more interested in something that could look more like a Bible church or a Presbyterian church, something that really is centered around teaching doctrine and verse by verse exposition.

If I’m more intuitively wired, I might be more interested in the aesthetics and the beauty and the seasons and the tradition of the Episcopal or the Catholic Church and so forth. If I’m very pragmatic by nature, I might be especially wired around Baptist churches and the missional expressions and evangelistic emphases and so forth.

I don’t mean these to be as simplistic as I’m making them right now, but I do believe that the various expressions of the church can be the hands and the feet and the eyes and the ears of Christ, and they [00:59:00] can be an expression of his body. Now, when they work against each other, then they’re frustrating Jesus, who’s praying for our unity, and they har they harm the witness of the church.

So I’m certainly not here to endorse the divisions and the ac ISTs kind of relationships that have existed over the years, but I also think. That these various expressions can be the body of Christ in its beauty at their best as different ways of reaching people that together come into that body of Christ, where, as you said one day in Revelation seven, they’re people of every tribe and language and people in tongue that are gathered around the throne, in front of the lamb and worshiping together with one voice.

And what a wonderful day that will be. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Such a good word. Because the stuff that we’ve been talking about today we would not wanna be flippant about because Jim, as you alluded to earlier, this has been the stuff of great at times, great violence of one Christian group against another. This has been historically the stuff of pretty significant [01:00:00] wars.

Not Christians against other religious groups, but Christians against each other. Mm-hmm. There have been many people who have. Who have died over some of the things that we’ve touched upon today. Ryan, you mentioned the name of John Huss. I, I keep, I keep thinking that there’s a conversation in heaven between Jesus, John Huss and Martin Luther going, Jesus, what’s, what’s the deal?

And there’s a lot for people to go study about that. But as we get ready to wrap up, let me, let me try out a metaphor on you guys and see if maybe this might be helpful to y’all and to our audience. I’ve been wondering, there’ve been many reports over, particularly over the last 10 years or so, that we are watching the slow death of denominations that we’ve known for, for decades or centuries, Presbyterians Methodists, lots in the news of the last few years about the, the split that has gone on within the United Methodist denomination.

And just about the time that you’re, that we might be ready to declare Yes, that’s what’s going to [01:01:00] happen. We’re gonna see these kinds of structures disappear. There’s an article out today talking about the three year consistent growth pattern pattern of the Presbyterian church in America. Mm-hmm.

Which is the more conservative side of the Presbyterian church that their baptisms of adults are up by 22%, their baptism of children up by 14%. Also information in this article that the overall presence of Christianity in the American culture has started to stabilize after a few years of decline particularly going back to the year of the PO of the pandemic.

In 2020, things have now kind of started to stabilize, not representing big growth, at least not yet, but indicating something seems to be changing. Here’s, here’s my metaphor. When spring comes around like it has now, my wife and I always talk about, let’s go get some flowers to make our house look beautiful.

I always know [01:02:00] what she’s going to look for. She’s not gonna look for a, a, a, a set of plants to plant in the, in the flower bed or to put out on the patio. That is just one kind of flower. My wife loves a bouquet of flowers that has 3, 4, 5, 6 different kinds of flowers all growing in the same pot. I’m sure we could talk another hour about how all of the divisions and different groups within Christianity are harming our witness to a lost world.

Jim, you alluded to that just a moment ago. Is it possible that this could be redeemed by God in such a way that it would be seen as more a bouquet of believers with different preferences and expressions of faith, but not trying to, shout, shout the other group down. Is that a, a good way to think about it?

Dr. Jim Denison: Absolutely think so. And the way that works in large part, I think I’ll say [01:03:00] very quickly, is when we have a common cause that draws us together. If you put everybody off the wall and put a chair in the middle of the room, the closer they get to the chair, the closer they get to each other. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. 

Dr. Jim Denison: So whether it’s building habitat houses together, or whether it’s doing something in the inner city, or whether it’s caring about the impoverished in some way, when we can come together across our differences for a larger good, the world sees that.

The world takes note of that because our culture is at least as divided as our denominations, more so I would say on partisan lines. I mean a higher percentage than ever before. Don’t want their children to date somebody of a different political party than they are 

Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. 

Dr. Jim Denison: Higher number than ever before.

We’re seeing divisions within the parties right now of hugely divisive and angry rhetoric rhetoric and so forth. And so if we can find ways to come together. Across racial and political and yes, denominational lines, the world sees that. The world yearns for that. I think the world is drawn to that, and the way that [01:04:00] we work across our differences for a larger, greater good becomes, I think a very powerful witness that the Holy Spirit can use to draw people to the God we serve together as we put him in that chair, in that throne, and we center ourselves around that throne as the Lord of our lives.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Such a good word. And as, as you have written about, as we talk about from time to time, the opposition that we are facing from the devil and from the culture at times resulting in persecution of Christians in various ways around the world and in the United States, points to the reality again, that we need each other.

That we we need to get past our secondary issues and focus on Christ and the mission in front of us and the linking of hearts and hands to do the work. As we finish up today, Ryan, I wanna give you one last question. The Christian researcher and writer, ed Stetzer says that the number one reason that Christians give up going to church is because they moved, they moved from one community to another community.[01:05:00] 

And the whole experience of finding a new church and getting back into the rhythms of living their life in the, in the relationship that they had with a local church just seems to, for some reason, become a struggle. And we live in a highly mobile society. Obviously, Ryan, if, if you were encouraging people that hey, you’ve just moved to a new town or a new part of town even and you need to find a local church so that you can express your faith and live in community with other believers.

What are the two or three best pieces of guidance that you’re gonna give to that family about assessing and finding and evaluating and choosing a new local church? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: I think the first, the first piece would just be to pray about it. I think that’s where, that’s a piece where I think a lot of people, a source of the struggle is that a lot of people go in looking for things that are not necessarily what God wants ’em to be looking for.

Do [01:06:00] they feel like they’re important things? Do you feel at home there? Do you enjoy the sermons? Do you enjoy the worship styles? Like all these things are very important pieces, but if you start with prayer, like just even something as simple as God, let me know where you want me to serve and let me know where I can plug in and where I can find community that will help me grow with you.

I think if we can start with that mindset that’s really, we’ll take care of so many of the other things, if for another of the reason that it puts them in their proper place in terms of priorities, I. Beyond that. I think it’s a lot of it has to do with are you single, are you married, do you have kids?

Like where are you in your life stage? And I think our, our church here in Tyler has grown in large part because our, our children’s ministry and our youth ministry are awesome. And so there’s a lot of young families that come and they come for their kids and then they find their place. And I think that’s a, a helpful piece as well.

And if I could just speak a word to local churches, I think making sure that you’re a hospitable place where when people come, they feel welcomed and they feel like you are [01:07:00] genuinely glad that they’re there. And I think that’s something that from a church staff standpoint to a church congregation standpoint, if we can, the more we can make that an emphasis of where people ge feel like we are genuinely happy, they chose to worship with us on Sundays, that will make a huge difference in bridging those gaps.

Because it is hard, it’s, it’s hard for most people to walk into some places as the new person, especially if everything in your life is new. But if you can help church feel like home, then it can help so many other things fall into place. ’cause people really are searching for that kind of community and people need that kind of community.

And if we can embody that well, and I think where it goes back to the denominational conversation is just, I, I think more now than ever, the denominations don’t matter as much as they probably used to in terms of, we have a lot more in common than we used to. And I think by and large churches have a better understanding of the essentials and prioritizing those essentials.

Part I think it’s part of God’s redemption of where we are as a culture is that it’s really kind of forced us to remember that, you know, we need to get back to what the Bible says is really important and [01:08:00] build our lives around that. And if you are new to a place, don’t feel like you can’t go and try the Methodist church just ’cause you grew up Baptist or you can’t try the Catholic church ’cause you grew up Episcopalian or whatever it is.

Really be open to where God leads you and then look for opportunities to plug in and serve. Because if you go in with the mindset of I’m not here for me, I’m here to worship God and I’m here to help others do the same, then it really does change the way that you evaluate churches. It changes the degree to which God can tell you where he wants you to be.

And so the, that would be like kind of that emphasis on ask God where he wants you versus trying to figure that out on your own, I think is really the best place to start. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, start, start with a spiritual foundation and try to not surrender yourself to the consumer mindset when it comes to where God wants you to be in his kingdom and in in the local church.

Gentlemen, thank you for being a part of this conversation. So many more things we could chase out. I want to thank our audience as well for being a part of this conversation. If it’s been helpful to you, we would ask you to rate, review us on your [01:09:00] podcast platform, share it with others so that they can be a part of the conversation as well.

And as always, we’re grateful not only for your attention today, but also for your ongoing support, both in prayer and. In finances as we are a ministry that is wholly donor supported. We thank you for that as well and we look forward to seeing you next time on the Denison Forum podcast. God bless you.