ClarkeComments.com

Hello all:

There has been a lot of talk about Unity on this website, and on others such as Alan’s and Phil’s. While talking and starting a dialouge is important and necessary to unity, action is what it all comes down to.

In the last couple of years, four congregations, two from a capella Churches of Christ, and two from Independent Chrisitan Churches, have come together and formed two new churches.

Christ Covenant Church, of Beaumont, Texas, merged in 2005. This congregation came together from the mergers of the Parkside Christian Church and the Cornerstone Church of Christ. The ministers from the respective congregations were introduced by a mutual friend who had a passion for unity in the Restoration Movement.

Northwest Church of Christ, of Shoreline, Washington, is the other congregation that has merged recently. This congregation formed after the Northwest Church of Christ and the Shoreline Christian Church came together in September 2004. This merger resulted after prayers for unity and a search for identity came together. Milt Jones, their minister, recently wrote the book “The Other Side of the Keyboard.”

These two congregations are living, breathing proof that the unity that occured during the days of Campbell and Stone is still possible. Rumors of mergers between mainline churches of Christ and ICOC congregations have been heard far and wide.

Maybe, after 100 years, we are finally learning that the divisions are evil, and that division achieves nothing other than it keeps us from sharing the word as efficiently and powerfully as we should.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The more I read about the church from authors in different places, and the more I talk with and read the comments of other bloggers out there, the more I realize that the church of Christ in the Northwest is a heck of a lot different than the church in Texas or Arkansas or anywhere else…

First off…Oregon, where I live, is the most “unchurched” state in the Union. Christians are definitely a minority here. However, I’m not just surrounded by a sea of atheism like New England is…. we have plenty of “spiritual” people here….lots of Buddhists, Wiccans, Hindus and Mormons, and newagers all around. I know of two Buddhist temples in the area that I could actually find… and we have two Mormon temples in the state as well.

Second, “mainline” churches are the huge majority of churches of Christ here…. I know of only two “one-cup” churches in the state, no “no-class” churches in the state, no charismatic churches…. and we only have a small handful of non-institutional churches here.

While I was perusing a copy of the directory of churches of Christ in the United States, I was amazed how many “no-class” and “one-cup” churches there were in places like Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and even California. Also…this directory was several years old, and it listed a total of 35 churches of more liberal persuasion that don’t totally hold to traditional doctrine…. it stated that those churches were pretty much distributed throughout the country…but, Oregon had 3 of those… which shows how we are just a little different here….

Also…we have several “churches of Christ” in the area that are instrumental and part of the Independent Christian Churches. While we don’t generally fellowship with those churches, there is more of a feeling that those churches are still “churches of Christ” than I think is probably predominant in most of the country. They are typically referred to as instrumental congregations and part of the Christian churches… and some of their members
defiantly definitely make it a point to attend our events and such….one of them went to Columbia Christian College and then was my choir teacher taught at the campus school when I went there..

We also have the Portland International Church of Christ here, with good old Kip McKean himself living and preaching in Portland….some of the Portland ICOC members attend Cascade College and I here they have some “bible talks” going on on campus….

I’ll end my ramblings here. Just interesting thoughts for me to reflect on…

-Clarke

Hello all:

My lovely wife has finally and graciously agreed to let me go to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in May.

If any of you are planning on going, please let me know. If I remember correctly, Greg said he might be going, so maybe we could have a little COC blogger get together down there…

-Clarke

A couple bits of news today:

I added several publications to the list…including Leaven, POWER, and some others…if you know of other church of Christ publications or media that should be on this list, drop a comment or an email…also, if you know of publications from other streams of the Restoration Movement that aren’t listed here, comment or email as well….

If you tried getting on here earlier today you probably noticed some theme errors or even got a 404 error. Our webhost seems to be having some major problems, not only with this page but on other pages I own as well. I am investigating other web hosts and will probably fire the current one unless they really get their act together soon….I’ve had a lot of problems with them in the last few months.

-Clarke