Are We Winning Yet? Spring 1999

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There's church-hopping, and there's church-shopping. The first—hopping—is universally agreed to be a bad thing: wandering from church to church with no real intention of ever making a commitment. Shopping, though, is sometimes a necessity. There are quite a few of us who were never raised in a particular denomination and may be finding a church home for the first time in our lives. Not everyone who likes to test the water before jumping in is a spiritual toad—and besides, you learn a lot about the different ponds.

Turn to "Churches" in the Yellow Pages and how many denominations do you see? Two? Three? More like 50. If you live somewhere like New York or Los Angeles, the phone book may list more than 100 denominations and their churches: Assemblies of God, Roman Catholics, Lutherans (ELCA), Lutherans (Missouri Synod), Nazarenes, Presbyterians (PCUSA), Presbyterians (PCA), United Methodists, Churches of Christ, non-denominationals, Community Churches, Anabaptists, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Calvary Chapel, Episcopalians, American Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Evangelical Free...The list goes on.

Studying the differences between these groups is a little like identifying different forms of bacteria—they're all germs, but what are the properties of this germ compared to that one? What about churches with names like "Family Christian Center," which (along with many churches these days) don't even make their denominational ties clear? How is a Baptist different from a Lutheran? What do ELCA and Missouri Synod mean? Are American Catholics different from Roman Catholics? Can I go to a Greek Orthodox Church if I'm Irish? Are they like Orthodox Jews? Which congregations teach the inerrancy of Scripture? Who baptizes ...

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