I tried to give an analogy - we are close to the Nazarene Church or the Wesleyan Church. Of course, unless you know those churches, that doesn't mean much. I could have told him we were out of the Pietistic Movement and had both Arminian and Wesleyan theological roots, but I don't know if that would help most (it didn't help him). I could pull out the old name dropper idea - the church of Bill Gaither and Sandi Patti. But you would have to know them to know what I was talking about and even knowing who they are, how does that define who the Church of God is? Do I give a list of doctrines? Do I explain how a normal service is structured (how is a normal Church of God service structured, anyway?) or talk about what we preach? Does anyone outside of a deep Christian experience understand what it means when we say we are a holiness movement? So, I ask again, who are we?
I know we live in a soundbite era and that the gospel resists being reduced to a soundbite, but what do you say when someone with limited Christian awareness asks who we are? How do you describe the Church to someone who doesn't have an intimate experience with a local church? How do you describe belief to those who don't have a vocabulary of religious terms? Well, I need some help. As a matter of fact, I will be dedicating the next several years of my life to try and figure out how to help this Movement called the Church of God to find some effective way of describing itself or understanding itself.
Will you help me? If you have any insights to give, give them to me. Post them here. If you don't have a strong biblical or local church background, help me understand what you want to know when you ask someone what their church is all about or what you want to know when you ask someone where they go to church. If you are part of the Church of God, how do you answer that question when it gets posed to you? Help me learn. I await your answers, questions, insights, and ramblings.
Sincerely,
A Fellow Struggler