Dr Paul Allen

Before you establish what the church is, you have to define what it isn’t. You have to clear away some of the rubble before you can build and construct something. There are four misconceptions about the church that are worth mentioning. 1. One misconception is that the church is merely a metaphor. It’s a term that gets thrown around—almost like Camelot—for some vague sense of community and fellowship. The church is more than that. 2. Another misconception is that it’s simply coffee with friends—that any kind of spiritually intentional gathering is replicating or doing what the church is called to do. Again, that would be inaccurate or insufficient 3. A third would be that the church is a human project. That might sound weird to say because it really is. Churches have staff and elder boards loaded with people. It’s not like angelic beings are running our churches, but the reality is that church is more than a human project. Christ himself says, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). Th...

The Welsh Government is poised to oust religious education and ban Christianity from schools to “rise to the challenge of community cohesion” and “extremism.” Welsh Minister for Education and Skills Huw Lewis, told Senedd, The Welsh Parliament: “My contention would be that we rename the [religious education] curriculum and transform it into the religion, philosophy and ethics element of the curriculum – where there is an explicit commitment to allowing children to ponder ideas around ethics and citizenship and what it means to be a citizen of a free country.” He argued that the Welsh government must “rise to the challenge of community cohesion” through reforming religious education. At the end of June an “ Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales” by Professor Graham Donaldson, a former chief inspector of schools in the principality, urged that pupils in Welsh schools should be “ethical, informed citizens of the world.” Earlier in the month, a report...

When is a church not a church? This question has received various answers throughout history, depending on one's perspective and evaluation of certain groups. There exists no monolithic interpretation of what constitutes a true church.  However, in classic Christian orthodoxy certain standards have emerged that define what we call "catholic," or universal, Christianity. This universal Christianity points to the essential truths that have been set forth historically in the ecumenical creeds of the first millennium and are part of the confession of virtually every Christian denomination historically. However, there are at least two ways in which a religious group fails to meet the standards of being a church. The first is when they lapse into a state of apostasy. Apostasy occurs when a church leaves its historic moorings, abandons its historic confessional position, and degenerates into a state where either essential Christian truths are blatantly denied or the den...