New denomination & right attitude towards it

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beej6

Puritan Board Sophomore
You are a member of the ABC denomination, a Reformed church. Sadly, a group of men whom you consider friends and brothers has decided to leave ABC and form QRS Church, a new Reformed denomination.

What is your attitude towards QRS? Does it matter whether the new QRS denomination are friendly, neutral, or hostile to your ABC church? I am mainly speaking about the "larger" church's attitude, though depending, it may of course affect relations between individual men in those churches.

Or is it simply a matter of the doctrinal differences between ABC and QRS? For example, if the reasons QRS formed a new church are invalid, or if their doctrine is now in error, would you then *not* consider QRS to be a true church?
 
I don't know BJ. There have been so many splits that the very idea of schism (sadly) does not have much meaning any more. I suppose it would depend in part on the conditions of membership in the ABC denomination. In the PCA, for example, a local congregation's membership is purely discretionary and not coerced. A congregation can leave for any reason (even non-doctrinal) at any time. There is not really a concept of obligation baked into the structure and termination of the relationship is free and easy. So, if someone leaves the PCA, there is not much in the way of grounds to say that the departing congregation is commiting any error.

[Edited on 4-17-2006 by Scott]
 
Originally posted by NaphtaliPress
Maybe a schismatic church; i.e. schismatic does not necessarily equate to false church.

i like that formulation, thanks.


one obvious problem with the schismatic, is that they put their personal interpretation of the offending doctrines on a higher level than the unity and peace of the church.

say we look at doctrines, ranked from most important to least.

the first bunch have to be those essential things that define being a Christian.
the nature of God and Christ, the atonement etc

the second group have to be really important things that Christians have historically divided over:
baptism, church government,

the last group is things that we might differ over in the local church but don't harm unity and peace.
perhaps things about worship, mode of baptism,


where is the peace and unity of the church?
i think it is in the essential first group. the nature of the church, the substance of membership vows, how seriously teaching elders take the Presbytery as their church and peer group. what seems to happen is that schismatics place some doctrine from group 3 into group 1 on top of the doctrine of the oneness of the church and thus split over than doctrine.


now does that make them a not-true church? no the essentials define that. if they put psalm singing only into essentials of the Gospel, they are guilty of binding people's conscience to strongly, not of destroying the Gospel.

it seems to be primarily a question of priorities.
 
I have another question; please forgive my ignorance. From an established Presbyterian denomination, the ABC Church, a group of churches leaves and then forms a new denomination, the DEF Church. How do the pastors/ teaching elders in the new DEF denomination handle their ordination? Are they still considered "ordained"? Don't their credentials 'belong' to ABC, and doesn't ABC need to approve of and therefore ordain at least one DEF minister?
 
Ordination is lifelong, so they carry it with them. The Reformers, for example, argued that Luther and other ordained officials who broke with Rome had valid ordinations b/c of their Roman ordination, even though they were no longer part of the Roman Church.
 
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