The Being of Churches

What is a church? Are denominations churches? Who has the authority to ordain ministers of the Gospel? How do we determine what a church gathering should look like? These are the questions of "polity," or the principles and foundations for the organisation and conduct of a church. Nearly 400 years ago, Christians in New England produced a clear articulation of polity based on the Bible, called The Cambridge Platform of Discipline. This document offers much insight into the way God would have churches act. In this book, the author engages with the Bible in the tradition of the Cambridge Platform to offer a new congregational polity, an account of the being and conduct of churches that retrieves the best insights of the Cambridge Platform while attempting to improve upon it in light of the later failings of American congregationalism and the 400 years of Christian reflection on the church that has followed that document. It is the author's prayer that this book would help churches engage with the Bible as they think about what it means to be a church and would give them the tools to do so with faithfulness and clarity.