By Jim Bublitz
The Reformers, Puritans, and early church creed writers understood how wrong-beliefs can have catastrophic consequences, both now and for eternity. Why then is such a low emphasis placed on beliefs today? The belief statements of the most popular churches seem to bending over backwards to tell us that a low emphasis is somehow advantageous. But after examining more than a few of these belief statements, I'm left asking "how low can you go?" Here's your chance to help answer that question.
Last week I posted a short audio clip on the modern trend towards short, vague, and essentially meaningless belief statements which the modern church uses almost as tools of evangelism. To demonstrate this trend, I've included an interesting chart below showing a word count for the statements of faith of some of the most popular churches in America. For comparison purposes, I've also included some old school Christians who have held to the historic belief statements of a better Christianity from times gone by.
| Statement of Faith | Subscribers | Word Count | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| London Baptist Confession | CH Spurgeon, James White, yours truly | 15,163 | 1689 |
| Augsburg Confession | Martin Luther | 14,938 | 1530 |
| Westminster Confession | RC Sproul, Michael Horton, Jonathan Edwards | 12,307 | 1646 |
| Grace Church Doctrinal Statement | John MacArthur, Phil Johnson | 5,700 | recent |
| Willow Creek Statement of Faith | Bill Hybels | 3,731 | recent |
| Bethlehem Baptist Church Beliefs | John Piper | 1,010 | recent |
| Cedar Ridge Community Church Beliefs | Brian McLaren | 877 | recent |
| Saddleback Beliefs | Rick Warren | 557 | recent |
| Fellowship Church Beliefs | Ed Young Jr. | 555 | recent |
| The Potters House Belief Statement | TD Jakes | 417 | recent |
| Northpoint Community Church Beliefs | Andy Stanley | 362 | recent |
| Crystal Cathedral | Robert Schuller | 361 | recent |
| Lakewood Beliefs | Joel Osteen | Low! 206 | recent |
At the bottom of this chart are the churches with the shortest belief statements, and perhaps we should conclude - the least emphasis on biblical doctrine. Right now Joel Osteen's (206 word) statement of faith is the shortest that I've found, and that from America's largest church. But I'm going to enlist you - the reader - in helping me find one that's shorter
(there have to be shorter ones out there, don't you think?).
If you think you've found one, paste it into Microsoft Word, and go to
File | Properties to retrieve it's word count. If the church you've found is lower than Joel Osteen's, post a comment below containing the link to their belief statement. As always, other comments are welcome below as well, but in the days ahead I'll put a trophy icon next to the winning (shortest belief statement) comment below. Unfortunately, your win will indicate that congregation's loss, as a low emphasis on biblical doctrine is so often a recipe for spiritual disaster.
I realize that long belief statements do not necessarily indicate orthodoxy, and are always subject to human error, and so these statistics can sometimes be deceiving. For example, though I'm not a big fan of John MacArthur's belief document, I would recoil from any comparison between his (very good) church and Bill Hybels' church, based on their word counts being in the same ballpark above. Furthermore, some of the postmodern fluff in Brian McLaren's belief statement drives up his word count, giving the illusion that he has more to say about vital doctrine than some of the other churches listed below him on the chart. And lastly, we should remember that the Roman Catholic church likely has the longest belief statement of anyone.
But with those caveats aside, I think this exercise will serve to highlight a very dangerous trend for contemporary churches, a trend diagnosed in last week's audio clip. And so my question of concern to churches like these is
"how low can you go?". What we've seen so far is already too low.
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