This week we started a walk through the London Baptist Confession, as a means toward adopting this confession as the official statement of belief for Communion Church. The audio did not work out, so the following is a condensed version of the talk, with the full transcript at the bottom.
A church that is confessional puts forward a statement of belief that represents its understanding of the Bible. This confession is used by the elders to guide what we do, by the church to know what is of importance, to test if we are being faithful, to answer questions about belief, and to stand out as a public statement of what we believe. Let me lay out for you 5 reasons why a confession is a helpful tool for churches to use:
Gives a clear picture of what the church believes and teaches.
One of the most difficult questions for me to answer is: what kind of church are you? As a non-denominational church, we can’t just answer with a name or tradition: Baptists/Presbyterian/ Methodist…in some ways I am just fine with. To be honest, my typical answer, ‘we believe the Bible’ leaves a lot to be desired. Every person who claims Christianity would also state that they believe the Bible. It is important to explain what it is that we believe the Bible teaches.
To have a confession gives a place to point people to say: this is who we are, this is what we believe. While I could sit and describe to people what I believe to be the main issues, to walk through, point by point, what the core convictions of the church are and what theological distinctions, it is helpful to be able to say: this document does a good job summarizing what we believe as a church. It is helpful for our church to be up front about our distinctions, because the glory of grace is in these distinctions, not just in general proclamations. It is a way that we declare with confidence that we trust in what God has said. I think the following quote sums this up well:
A confession asserts that God has spoken clearly and specifically. Holding to a confession is an act of humility, admitting that we are not, as we would wish, the final arbiters of truth. Instead, in our confessions we proclaim that God has given us absolute, nonnegotiable truth. Confession is our obedient response to what God has spoken. It is an acknowledgment that God is God, and that we are not. | Michael Reeves
A confession allows us to put what we believe God says out there. To make it abundantly clear that while there are different interpretations of what God has said, what He has given us in the Bible is the authority that drives us and the means that we will be corrected. This issue of different interpretations leads to the second benefit of a confession:
Starting point for theological conversations.
People don’t often think of theological arguments as a good thing, let alone a goal. If it is valuable, we are going to pursue it. I love this quote by Gresham Machen in Christianity and Liberalism:
“In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.
No one is going to bother starting a fight over something that doesn’t matter, but they will be willing to defend a truth worth defending. The truth is, one of the reasons we don’t value serious dialogue is because most of our debates and conversations are carried out in unhealthy forms. We misunderstand the position of the people with whom we disagree and we form a straw man version of their beliefs. Wouldn’t it be way better if they had a chance to represent their position in a robust, defined way. This is what a confession does. It allows our beliefs to be seen for what they are and where they come from (confession includes all of the Bible passages that lead to the doctrine). What this means is that it gives you something concrete to agree or disagree with. A confession puts thing down in writing to be engaged with. It invites this engagement.
You don’t have to agree with everything (you will even see as we go through that the elders here have some qualifications), but the process of having qualifications defined is actually very helpful and gives a starting point for further discussion.
Gives answers to FAQs
The third helpful part of a confession is that it serves as an answer to many of the questions people have about the church. This doesn’t mean that your pastors don’t want to answer your questions anymore, but as we said in the previous point, this gives our conversation a framework. What does the church believe? Read this, look up all the verses associated and then come back and we will discuss your thoughts on it. This provides a source to go to when you have questions.
Act as a horizon line for our theological journey.
The fourth benefit of a confession is that it is an unchanging declaration of God’s truth. I use the term horizon line, like an attitude indicator on a plane – the gauge that shows what your position relative to the horizon. Pilots need that because in flight it is difficult to determine if you are balanced in flight. Likewise, as we go through life, we tend to not notice when we get off-line.
God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so is His truth. While we change, and grow and rethink, God stays the same. It is helpful to have a stable statement that acts as a measure for us of how we are being altered. Sometimes this means that there is something in the confession you thought was off, that you have grown to love. Sometimes it may be something that you have started to drift away from in the confession, but it stays in one place as a reminder that YOU have moved.
This is why I think a historical confession is especially helpful. What I mean by that is: we have the option of adopting a newer confession, writing our own, OR taking on a confession that was written a long time ago. There is a lot of debate about this.
It is easier to take a modern confession that has been written to address modern issues or to write one for your own context. I believe the struggle of adopting a historical confession is actually a benefit. Here’s why. To take on a confession written hundreds of years ago is an even greater horizon line for us. It forces us to see that our greatest concerns are not their greatest concerns, are not God’s greatest concerns. Are these confessions written in a specific historical context? OF COURSE. Through time, they have been interacted with and used by people in many different times and contexts, interactions we have access to. It allows us to take a longer look at this idea of priorities.
I think a lot of our anxiety currently is because we are told that we are supposed to care about everything; the confession helps to balance that out and connect us to what is most important for us to care about. It frees us from feeling like we somehow are not engaged enough in the things that the current climate is demanding us to make a priority.
Connects us to a communion of saints
This is the other benefit of a historical confession. We are not only prone to prioritize our issues, but also to prioritize our experience. It is helpful to connect ourselves to those who have gone before us, the great cloud of witnesses. we need to remember that millions of people believing these things have loved God and loved their neighbor and don’t need us to come and save Christianity. We need to see that the simple act of knowing God and obeying Him (through this confession) has born fruit and produced a gospel legacy. We need this so that we don’t get discouraged. We need this so that we don’t get too proud. We need this because we it helps us to see ourselves as small in the grand scheme of God’s redemptive plan, but important because we are the next link of the chain to carry it forward.