#7 The Twelve Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Church: What Do We Believe?

Leadership

We live at a time of superficiality in virtually every arena of life today from politics to economic and from philosophy to religion. At this time people seem to care less about substantive beliefs and more about shallow temporary things. Many pastors get the impression that Christians have little concern about fundamental beliefs, considering that most church conflicts erupt over superficial things rather than theological beliefs. However, the time will come in the arenas I mentioned herein that the foundational beliefs will matter to the people, and it is usually when their world is falling apart. Consider that as the current economic upheaval worsens, foundational issues that do not change with the winds will become important to people once again. Another reason core beliefs are important is that they define who we are collectively as a church in a particular location. But within that discussion there is a caveat: if our beliefs are not based on definitive core values, and we do not put those “beliefs” into action, then we do not truly believe those things. For instance, I conducted a study a couple of years ago regarding the doctrinal beliefs and surveyed two churches with an instrument I developed that had been evaluated for validity and reproducibility. In both churches a majority agreed that sharing our faith is everybody’s job, but they also agreed that sharing our faith is primarily the job of pastors. Could this be the reason for the hotly discussed decline of baptisms in Southern Baptist churches? My point always seems to go back to my coaching/discipleship model which simply postulates: 1) people do what they intrinsically value, and 2) people do not do that which they do not intrinsically value. Thus, when you ask church leaders, “What do we believe?” you may have to qualify it. In other words, at one level, “What are we supposed to believe?” and then “What do we really believe that is confirmed by our actions?” Consider that many leaders of evangelical churches will say that their people believe in evangelism as the highest priority, but their church or denominational budgets say otherwise. It is a good practice for church leaders to work through a preaching series on foundational doctrines once each year, but it is even better to couple this event with forums that allow for two-way interaction. If church leaders fear that kind of forum, set clear boundaries for the decorum of the forum in advance and then hold people accountable to them. I have let church leaders know of the instrument I developed to measure the doctrinal health of churches, but have received little interest. I suspect it is because they are content to be ignorant of the real beliefs of their people. Real discipleship requires that leaders “teach them to observe all things that Jesus commanded.” What do the actions of your church say that you believe? That is the real question behind the question (QBQ).

SD Blessings!

Dr. Tom Cocklereece

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