5 Reasons Theological Diversity is Important in a Post-Christian World

I believe thinking about theological diversity within the local church will become a necessity of the church in the post-Christian era. We can no longer afford to be divisive and turn on each other when the world has turned on us. There are five big reasons that theological diversity within the local church is absolutely necessary:

1) The local church is becoming increasingly ecumenical. Church attendance is becoming more diverse as Americans become more comfortable with spiritual alternatives. With a more post-modern perspective, people who were raised in one denomination or stream of Christianity are more comfortable leaving that stream for another one. This is seen in such movements as the recent trend of young evangelicals migrating to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions.

2) The local church is becoming missional. The attractional model functioned in American Christendom because it fulfilled the needs of both church and attendee: the church continued to exist by bringing in numbers and the attendee received spirituality while remaining a healthy arms-length away from engaging in the heartbeat of discipleship and faith. Now that the culture at large is okay with not being part of a spiritual community, the local church must become missional since this is how the Church has learned to live in cultures that are secular. The missional church needs theological diversity because it is no longer attracting people to a particular mode of worship or set of doctrines but instead to a framework of spirituality and discipleship that needs to remain open to a person’s (a)theological background and ethnic and/or cultural heritage.

3) The local church is becoming discipleship oriented. Disciples are followers of a certain way. The way of Christ has many streams in it, as can be seen by the huge amount of denominations, conferences, collectives, and sects within Christianity. These streams are all one manifold witness for Christ, to borrow from John Franke. With so many streams of discipleship, it is paramount that the local church not have a one-size-fits-all approach to discipleship but instead allows the believer to grow into an authentic relationship with Christ, whether that takes on the form of belting out contemporary worship music or chanting Psalms.

4) The local church is becoming the ambassador of Christianity in a broader culture. With more and more people being raised completely outside of a religious or spiritual context the Church is becoming counter-cultural (not because we’re cool, but because Christendom is dead). As ambassadors for Christ in the local community we can no longer afford to treat our fellow Christians who are different in doctrine, worship, or spiritual practice as the ugly stepsister. We need to stick together in our diversity because that is the greatest testimony to a post-Christian world: “we are not divisive like the world is, we are one kingdom under Christ.”

5) The local church is becoming a safe haven for spiritual exploration. With so many young people now growing up without any spiritual heritage it is crucial that the local church be a model of theological diversity. Not only is this a testimony of our unity to the broader culture, it is also a sign to those that are spiritually seeking that the local church is a safe place to think about mortality, God, the afterlife, sin, evil, justice, and equality. Those that are spiritually seeking are looking for a spiritual center without the rigidity of a faith community that claims to know all the answers. In essence, people are now seeking faith communities built upon faith as the center and not an airtight system of proven beliefs.  The theological diverse local church is a safe place for people with spiritual questions to come and ask them without fear of rejection.