So, your friend invited you to come to the church of Christ for a worship service. Or, maybe you were surfing the web and came across a site for the church of Christ. Or, maybe you saw a building with the words “Church of Christ” on a sign in the front yard. And maybe you’re wondering, “Why should I look at the church of Christ?” That’s a great question, which deserves a multi-chapter book to fully address, but consider these thoughts for a moment.
It may encourage you to know that the designation “church of Christ” is one that you can read in the New Testament (Rom. 16:16), and not one that we came up with on our own. In fact, that principle is a good way to explain the “church of Christ” to you. Our aim and purpose is to follow the same rationale for determining the name we wear as we use to determine everything else that we teach and practice.
The Bible is the inspired Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Pet. 1:20-21). The Bible teaches us that Christ has all authority (Matt. 28:18), and that it will be the words of Christ that will judge us in the end (John 12:48). The Bible teaches that we are not to “add to” or “take away from” the Word of God (Rev. 22:18-19), and that we are not to “go beyond” or speak beyond what is written (1 Cor. 4:6; 1 Pet. 4:11). The Bible teaches that one’s entrance into heaven is dependent upon doing the will of God (Matt. 7:21).
Since the Bible teaches that mankind is to have Biblical authority for everything that we say or do (Col. 3:17), our goal is simply to teach whatever the Bible teaches, without addition or subtraction or modification. We strive to call Bible things by Bible names and to do Bible things in Bible ways.
Therefore, using the same rationale for determining the name that we should wear, we go to the New Testament to know everything else that we need to teach and practice. We are not interested in what we might be able to come up with on our own, or going along with what other groups are teaching, or being tied to a long-standing church tradition.
We are endeavoring to be the very church that you read about in the New Testament—the very one that Jesus promised to build (Matt. 16:18), that Jesus shed His blood to purchase (Acts 20:28), that was established in Acts chapter 2, that grew throughout the pages of the book of Acts, that received numerous letters from inspired writers, and that Jesus said would never be destroyed (Matt. 16:19; Dan. 2:44).
If you would like to go back to the church of the Bible and to follow the pattern of the New Testament and to restore Christianity as it was originally designed to be at its inception, you should grab your Bible and look at the church of Christ!