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“Name That Difference”
Categories: RELIGIONS, THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH, UNITED CHURCH OF GODI am a member of a Baptist church, but I was thinking about changing. What is the difference between Church of God and church of Christ?Sincerely,
Just Browsing
Dear Just Browsing,
The Church of God and the churches of Christ are vastly different. The Church of God is a name used by numerous, mostly unrelated Christian denominational bodies, most of which descend from either Pentecostal/Holiness or Adventist traditions. Most groups that use the title Church of God believe in speaking in tongues, modern prophecy, and visions. All of these things are false teachings. See “Speaking In Tongues”, “The Lost Art Of Prophecy”, “I Dreamed A Dream” for further details on what the Bible says about these behaviors.
Churches of Christ are all individual congregations (we have no centralized leadership other than the Bible) that simply try to follow the Bible pattern for everything they do. This is not the case with every church of Christ, but it certainly is for us in Monroe, WA.
Everything a church does (worship, membership, how they teach to be saved, how they spend their money, even their name) needs to have Bible verses backing them up (1 Tim 3:15). A church needs to be able to explain the reasons for why they do what they do (1 Pet 3:15).
Our congregation here in Monroe goes by the name ‘Monroe Valley church of Christ’ because ‘church of Christ’ is a Biblical name for a congregation (Rom 16:16). We worship by singing (Col 3:16), studying the Bible (1 Tim 4:13), praying (2 Thess 3:1), taking communion (only on Sundays – Acts 20:7), and taking up a collection (also only on Sundays – 1 Cor 16:1-2). We teach that you must hear God’s Word (Rom 10:17), believe God’s Word (Jhn 3:16), repent of your sins (Mk 6:12), confess Jesus as your Savior (Lk 12:8), and be baptized to be saved (Acts 2:38, 1 Pet 3:21). We do all these things because they are practices found in the Bible. Our philosophy is simple: if the Bible speaks, we speak; if the Bible is silent, we are silent.
Hopefully that helps to clarify the differences for you. A faithful church of Christ is simply trying to do just what the Bible says… no more, no less.
