Attending Different Churches: Divisive attitudes

Evangelical · 09-09-2018, 09:05 AM

There is an interesting gotquestions article about attending different churches:

https://www.gotquestions.org/two-churches.html

Is it wrong to attend two (or more) different churches?

And this article concludes with:

While there may be legitimate reasons for someone to attend two or more churches, and nothing in the Bible forbids it, it is hard to see how such a practice could fully benefit either the believer or the local churches he or she attends.

There is also another article which is against church hopping

https://www.gotquestions.org/church-hopping.html

It says:

There is no indication in Scripture that towns or cities had more than one group of believers meeting there.

Sometimes people church-hop to avoid getting too deeply involved with any one congregation, but that defeats the purpose of the body of Christ which is, as Hebrews notes, to “encourage one another.” We can’t encourage those we don’t spend time getting to know, nor can we be encouraged by other Christians if they are essentially strangers to us.

I could take this advice as an endorsement of local church practice of devotion to the one group of believers in the locality. The practice of "church -hopping" between different denominations means we cannot encourage or be encouraged by others.

Actually, this advice somewhat surprised me given that the local churches are supposedly the divisive ones and the denominations are not so divided - should not "local churches" be encouraging people to attend different "local churches"?

What is interesting about this article is that it discourages a believer from attending different "local churches" as it says it will not benefit the believer or the "local church".

The hypocrisy of thinking is shown by the following contradiction:

a) wondering why local church members do not fellowship with other churches, and we are called divisive if we don't; meanwhile
b) expecting that people in the denominations will attend and devote themselves to one "local church", and discouraging "church hopping" which is effectively the same as a).

Despite the claims of some that denominations are not divided, this attitude of attending one local church out of a plurality of "local churches" within a city will certainly maintain the divisions between multiple local churches in a city.

I agree with the article regarding devotion to one local church. Unfortunately the article sees multiple local churches within the one city, which are not really churches, but sects, and so it actually saying that a believer should devote themselves to one particular sect and not "sect-hop".

However if we see that all believers in the city are the local church, then meeting on the proper ground , the true "one local church" will result in unity. We are not "sect-hopping" because we see all believers as part of the same local church.

Having been in both denominations and in the local churches, I believe that individuals in local churches do indeed mingle more with different believers in other parts of the city or across different cities (both nationally and internationally) than a typical person would in a denomination who devote themselves exclusively to one sect (because of articles like this GotQuestions one). This is because a sect is smaller than a city-local church, and so the opportunities for fellowship are more limited.

09-09-2018, 09:05 AM	#1
Evangelical Member Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 3,965	Attending Different Churches: Divisive attitudes There is an interesting gotquestions article about attending different churches: https://www.gotquestions.org/two-churches.html Is it wrong to attend two (or more) different churches? And this article concludes with: While there may be legitimate reasons for someone to attend two or more churches, and nothing in the Bible forbids it, it is hard to see how such a practice could fully benefit either the believer or the local churches he or she attends. There is also another article which is against church hopping https://www.gotquestions.org/church-hopping.html It says: There is no indication in Scripture that towns or cities had more than one group of believers meeting there. Sometimes people church-hop to avoid getting too deeply involved with any one congregation, but that defeats the purpose of the body of Christ which is, as Hebrews notes, to “encourage one another.” We can’t encourage those we don’t spend time getting to know, nor can we be encouraged by other Christians if they are essentially strangers to us. I could take this advice as an endorsement of local church practice of devotion to the one group of believers in the locality. The practice of "church -hopping" between different denominations means we cannot encourage or be encouraged by others. Actually, this advice somewhat surprised me given that the local churches are supposedly the divisive ones and the denominations are not so divided - should not "local churches" be encouraging people to attend different "local churches"? What is interesting about this article is that it discourages a believer from attending different "local churches" as it says it will not benefit the believer or the "local church". The hypocrisy of thinking is shown by the following contradiction: a) wondering why local church members do not fellowship with other churches, and we are called divisive if we don't; meanwhile b) expecting that people in the denominations will attend and devote themselves to one "local church", and discouraging "church hopping" which is effectively the same as a). Despite the claims of some that denominations are not divided, this attitude of attending one local church out of a plurality of "local churches" within a city will certainly maintain the divisions between multiple local churches in a city. I agree with the article regarding devotion to one local church. Unfortunately the article sees multiple local churches within the one city, which are not really churches, but sects, and so it actually saying that a believer should devote themselves to one particular sect and not "sect-hop". However if we see that all believers in the city are the local church, then meeting on the proper ground , the true "one local church" will result in unity. We are not "sect-hopping" because we see all believers as part of the same local church. Having been in both denominations and in the local churches, I believe that individuals in local churches do indeed mingle more with different believers in other parts of the city or across different cities (both nationally and internationally) than a typical person would in a denomination who devote themselves exclusively to one sect (because of articles like this GotQuestions one). This is because a sect is smaller than a city-local church, and so the opportunities for fellowship are more limited.