Loose Canons III: No Congregation is an Island

One of the often overlooked themes in Daniel Defoe's brilliant Robinson Crusoe is that of Christian salvation. Crusoe, alone with his thoughts, finds God; but it's only when he converts Friday that he realizes how empty his life was without Christian fellowship. The island at that point becomes a metaphor for man's spiritual state apart from the Church, a metaphor the Presbyterian Defoe no doubt intended.

If it's true that individuals die a slow spiritual death cut off from the Body of Christ, isn't the same true of local assemblies? Christ calls us into His fold individually, but He emphatically does not call us to figure everything out on our own, to cut ourselves off from the lifeblood of Christian communion, to be the sole stewards of our own spiritual health. The Church is for the building up of the saints, for their nurture and growth, for their accountability (and for evangelism; more on that later).

Denominations exist to provide the same kind of care and accountability for congregations that those congregations provide for their individual members. Accountability is never a unilateral affair; humans are universally fallen, and we need accountability above, below and to either side. A denomination holds leaders and assemblies responsible in a way isolated congregations cannot be held accountable.

For example: within my own Orthodox Presbyterian tradition, the doctrines and practices of each congregation are held under constant review. When either of those are deficient or beyond the scope of orthodoxy or tradition, the pastor and elders of the concerned congregation are questioned and held responsible for their decisions. Humans are liable to fail; it's not that leaders are held under constant suspicion, just that there needs to be some way to keep them accountable when they stray from the standard to which their denomination is supposed to hold them.

When assemblies throw off the authority of denominational headship, their leaders become autonomous heads with no effectual accountability. There may be accountability among the elders themselves, but beyond that no one can approve or reject whatever decisions they make, whether good or bad. Even if the congregation is assumed to provide a form of accountability, the leadership too often makes decisions without consulting the congregation, or irrespective of their desires and opinions.

The Western emphasis on individualism suggests each human being has a destiny to fulfill on their own. That ideal has crept into the Church, but it's far from God's ideal. Christ's people are meant to work together in His name, partly because there's strength in numbers, partly because human beings can't be trusted to hold themselves to the standard Christ calls us to.

It's not just the Church itself that benefits from denominational accountability; it's the unbelievers we're called to evangelize. Without denominational headship, congregational leaders will find it all too easy to dilute, mispresent, or oversimplify the Gospel. This isn't due to any malicious intent or purposeful lack of faithfulness, but simply due to our human propensity for error. Essential elements of the Good News are too easily left out, especially the difficult-to-accept parts like the need for repentance, the importance of holy living (perseverance of the saints), and the utter helplessness of humans to save themselves because of their utter wickedness.

A central doctrine of Christianity is that it is Christ who keeps His people in the faith. However, as the Westminster Confession so aptly puts it, the Lord uses secondary as well as primary means to accomplish His ends, and He intended the Church to be a joint effort, not a mere collection of dissociated individuals. Of course, one's soteriology will largely determine one's ecclesiology, but that's another post altogether. For this one, let if suffice to say God's people are meant to be held accountable at the congregational and denominational levels, for the preservation of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and the benefit of both believers and unbelievers.