Does Our Statement of Faith Matter?

Pastors may often be asked why we have such a lengthy Statement of Faith and whether it really matters.

Mark Alderton, who served on the theology committee that created our Statement of Faith, talks about how pastors can help members see the importance of a sturdy and substantive Statement of Faith.

[Transcript lightly edited for clarity.]

Host: Welcome to the Pastor's Voicemail, where we take common questions for pastors and drop in a voicemail of helpful and timely advice. This week we're answering a common question that we often get in our new members classes. It goes something like, why is our statement of faith so long in sovereign grace? And do I really have to read the whole thing to become a member? And yet I think we all know people are really asking;

Why does a statement of faith matter for the average member?

And how can we as pastors equip them to think biblically? Well, our answer comes from Mark Alderton, who serves as senior pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Aurora, Colorado. He was also on the theology committee that spent several years drafting our new statement of faith. Now, here's Mark.

Mark Alderton: I had four reasons as to why it's as long as it is and why we should read it and teach it. And I've done that in our church.

We've taught through the whole statement of faith, not every single paragraph, but like 17 messages on it. Here's a reason why it's as long as it is. What you leave out can become a point of division if it makes an important difference in how you do church life. So I'll give you an example. I became an elder in the church about three decades ago.

It was an independent church, non-denominational. The statement of faith was like a page long, maybe a page and a half, short distance enough to say, yeah, you're probably a Christian if you believe this, but not much else. Fast forward about five more years. As elders, we started to teach on the gifts, spiritual gifts, and we taught a continuationist position that things like prophecy and tongues are still for today. Long story short, we lost about a third of the church because they had not signed up for a church that was continuationist.

They just assumed, well, you don't say anything about it, so you are probably like me now. That is not the most important doctrine in the Bible, the continuation of the gifts. But in functional church life, it'll make a difference. And it made a difference. So we lost about a third of the church.

So point being, some things aren't central doctrines, but by not saying anything about them, you can lose your church, lose your unity when it becomes clear that we're not on the same page. So that's the first reason.

Second reason it's so long. It's cultural pressures and winds of doctrine force us to articulate the Christian faith in greater detail. So even in Sovereign Grace, years ago, when we made our statement of faith in like early 90s or late 80s, it didn't have a statement on gender and sexuality, because just think of that, that's only like 30, 40 years ago. It wasn't needed because the general assumption, even culturally, was that gender is binary and marriage is union of those two genders, male and female. Now, that's the tip of the spear that's being, you know, poked at the Church. That's where the opposition is. And so we have to have a statement on it that needs to be addressed.

I think it was Spurgeon who said, where the battle rages, there the soldier proves his loyalty. So gender, sexuality is where the battle rages today. And if we are loyal to Christ, we have to say everything that Christ would say. And he defended male and female in the image of God. He made them.

So we have to say something about it, because otherwise we know from Romans 12:2 that there is pressure to conform to this world, to be pressed into the mold of this world. And if we don't say something about these issues that are putting pressure on, the Church will be more likely to cave in.

Here's the third question, or the third reason for the long statement of faith. History teaches us that preserving the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints requires careful articulation. So when you go back to some of the councils, like Nicaea and Chalcedon, they were hammering out the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the nature of Christ.

And one of the debates was whether Christ was homoousius, meaning of the same substance as the Father, or homoeus, meaning of a similar substance. So the first one is orthodoxy, that Jesus is Son of God, equal in essence to the Father. The second one is heresy, that Jesus is less than God. He's similar, but not same. So the difference between orthodoxy and heresy can be, in that case, one letter of one word.

And so they spent, you know, weeks, months, however long it took to hammer out this statement, and now it's preserved for us today. But they recognized you have to be specific. You have to write in such a way that you can't be misunderstood, not just understood. And so that requires more words to rule out all kinds of winds of doctrine and subtleties that are always pressing on us.

And then the fourth one is that Scripture itself exhorts us to handle Scripture accurately and not just generally.

So, for example, first Timothy 4:16, “Pay close attention to yourself, [this is Paul speaking to Timothy], and to your teaching. Persevere in these things. For as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you."

So salvation is at stake in whether we are being careful or sloppy in our articulation and teaching of the biblical truth, particularly the Gospel.

It does require close attention and closely articulated wording. The reason for this kind of close attention? Paul speaking to the elders of Acts in Acts, the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. He said, after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

So Paul recognized, you know, I've deposited truth into your guys soul. I've given you the Gospel and the word of God, but I know what's going to happen after I leave. There will be people from among your own selves, from within the church who are going to rise up and say things that are twisted that are just off a little bit. They have enough that looks like truth that you buy into it. But then there's this deadly error in it.

And he says, I know that's going to happen. And so how do you protect against that? Well, one of the ways is we have a statement of faith that is articulated, that's careful, we think sound and faithful to the Scriptures and we codify that in a big document. It by itself doesn't prevent drift, but it will make it harder for a whole denomination or a church to drift because we've all agreed this is what orthodoxy looks like and it takes a lot of people to try and change anything in our denomination. We've made it so that it's take 75% of the council of elders just to agree to propose a change to the whole denomination.

And then you have to have 75% of all the regents approve it. So like a super majority to make even any small change to it. So we're trying to make it harder for us to drift. For the men who rise up speaking twisted things to get a say, we're trying to shut it down. A statement of faith is one of the things that helps that.

So the Westminster Confession is still in force today and we hope our statement of faith will last for centuries also.

Host: Thanks for listening. If you have a question about pastoral ministry, we'd love to find an answer for you. Submit a question at sgcpastors.com. While you're there, you'll also find other ministry resources from Sovereign Grace churches. In addition to that, if you go to webelieve.sovereigngrace.com you'll find our statement of faith broken into sections and an editor's edition with a number of helpful notes from Mark and the rest of the theology committee.

We’ll see you next time.