A dear gracEmail subscriber writes, “I have been receiving your mail for almost a month now. I get the picture that you have something against the churches of Christ. Is that so? If it is, why?”
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If by “churches of Christ” you mean the congregations of those who trust Jesus as Savior and who follow him as Lord, those assemblies mentioned in Romans 16:16, then I certainly hope not to be “against” them, for that would place me, like Saul of Tarsus, squarely against Jesus himself (Acts 9:1-5).
If you refer to the modern-day Christian group known as Churches of Christ, which sprang from the 19th century “restoration movement” of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone and others, then the answer is still “No.” I am an elder in a Church of Christ, have preached (full-time and occasionally) for Churches of Christ since 1961, my father was a Church of Christ preacher, my mother was born on the mission field to Church of Christ missionaries, I attended Church of Christ schools from grade one through a master’s degree, and the majority of gracEmail readers belong to Churches of Christ.
Because I care very much for the Churches of Christ, I want to help us live up to our biblical ideals and to the best goals of our founding fathers. That sometimes means pointing out where we fall short, but it is always with a desire to help us do better. Like all humans, we sometimes do things well and sometimes make a mess of things. Of course that makes us neither better nor worse than other Christians. We all depend every moment on the undeserved grace of God in Jesus Christ.
