Ep. 115 | Denominations Part 1 | Pickled Chats 8

Hosts: Hunter Hoover & Jesse Turkington

Available on all podcasting platforms

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Available on all podcasting platforms -

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Summary

Jesse and Hunter discuss the purpose and value of denominations.

Passages explored: 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

contact@parableministries.com
https://www.parableministries.com
https://www.instagram.com/parable_ministries/

Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi

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Host’s Bio’s

Hunter grew up in Montana and now serves the Church in Albany Oregon where he works as a youth and young adults pastor. He and his wife Ana stay busy with two kids. Hunter loves studying the Bible and communicating it in a way which encourages further exploration of others. Hunter enjoys listening and making podcasts for others to enjoy.

Jesse Turkington is the executive director of Parable Ministries and has been a Bible teacher for the last 9 years. When Jesse was just finishing high school, he started a little Bible study at his parent’s house. Little did he know, this Bible study would change the direction of his life. He fell in love with the richness of the Bible and he wanted to pursue serious study. About 10 years later, Jesse still carries that passion for the Bible and from this passion was born Parable Ministries - a Bible teaching resource. Jesse believes that the Bible is a life changing book and that it can transform the way we view the world. The Bible presents a Creator God who desires intimate fellowship with us. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Through study and thoughtful meditation, the Bible works to untangle our situational worldview and elevate our hopes and desires - we are encouraged to think on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Jesse is all about this book and he wants to share it with whoever will listen.

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Transcript

Intro:

Hey there, welcome to Pickled Parables. This podcast is presented by Parable Ministries as a Bible teaching resource. Thank you for joining us. Pickled Parables is a podcast about taking in and living out the Bible. Here we will study, contemplate and testify to the Bible's incredible teachings and how it leads us to live better lives. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. We hope today's message finds you well.

Main Topic:

Well, hello, everyone, welcome back to Pickled Chats.

I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I am joined by Jesse Turkington.

Jesse, how are you?

I am doing so well.

Thank you for having me here on this beautiful day.

Yeah.

Yeah, you've got a...

It rained today in the Pacific Northwest, which is not a sentence that is normally striking, but it's been hot and bad, and so it rained this morning, and I loved it.

Anyway, but we are...

This episode, we're kind of...

We've been doing a God and Sinners kind of mini-series, and we're going to continue that, but we are going to begin some conversations, and these, just to be forthright, these are spurred on by a lot of work that Jesse has been doing on social media, wherein he has been discussing and kind of highlighting different denominations within the Christian Church or the Evangelical Protestant.

The umbrellas kind of have umbrellas, and so we're going to talk about that a little bit today, but as kind of a supplement to that, but also to get some conversation going as he continues into that, we're going to be talking about denominations a bit today.

And before we jump into it, I want to note just a little disclaimer, a little stamp at the front here, is that Jesse and I, I think we come from pretty similar, if not the same kind of denominational background.

We're very much in this Western evangelical, I would say Protestant Christian heritage.

And so there will be mentions of denominations that fall outside of that umbrella, that just to tell you the truth, because we are not involved with them and have not been involved with them, and at least, as far as I can tell, don't have a lot of intention to be involved with them.

We will not be able to speak to those things as well as someone who is in it.

And so a lot of our observations do come as outsiders, as people who have read and looked at some history, but also have had interactions with people who were insiders, for lack of a better way of saying it.

So that's where this comes from.

It also, and we didn't talk about this, but the discussion of denominations does not come from a place that seeks to draw big lines and put God's people into buckets, so that way we can separate us.

At Parable, I think our goal in discussing the denominations is to get a better understanding of all of these differences that we have for one reason or another.

And at times, that might mean calling out maybe concerns in those differences, or those differences allow us to have some conversation.

So we are not condemning denominations that are not us.

It is rather to have conversation.

So to start, I think it's valuable to set some terms, and I don't think we're going to get much farther than setting terms, to be honest, Jesse.

Okay.

So denomination, the idea of a denomination, my understanding, and I also would like, Jesse, you to share on this, is that it is differences in history, tradition and practice inside of the umbrella of the term Christian.

And I think, so I'll end there, and then, because I think we're going to around on that, where we draw the umbrella.

Sure.

I want to back up a second real quick and, and say, the kind of the premise of Pickled Parables, this podcast that we're on right now is, we partner with many different Bible teachers to teach and to bring their studies of the Bible.

Because I found it to be very valuable to listen to many different perspectives and voices, because it encourages me to practice discernment by just listening to one person that has gained my trust.

I really find myself turning off my discernment and I just take it in, which is fine, I guess, if you trust that person.

But it's so valuable to listen to people that you're not super sure about, because you've never heard of them before, but to hear them because the Bible is so big, you might hear from a professor who's done their dissertation on Ecclesiastes, and then the next week you listen to someone who is really passionate about Jesus' parables, and they have spent a different amount of time studying those things, and so they have a different insight that they can bring and share.

And so that is our hope with Pickled Parables in partnering with people.

Now, the pastors, professors, Bible counselors, and evangelists that we partner with are more or less Protestant, of the Protestant umbrella within the denominations, and they all come from somewhat similar backgrounds.

But our goal is to bring those different voices and insights into reading the Bible, because I find it to be very valuable.

So I want to present that first in our acknowledgement of this denominations topic, where some denominations have focused a lot of their attention on certain types of theology, or on certain practicums, different practices of how they practice their faith.

And that can be so valuable sometimes to look at and see, oh, I don't do that.

Why do they do that?

And then see how that happens.

I would love, Hunter, this would be so cool to do someday.

I would love to find a Bible counselor or with a psychiatry degree and do a research on how different faiths within the Christian denomination sphere, how that impacts the way they treat other people, how they live their lives.

Like, as a Baptist, say, this person is more inclined to do this with a stranger or as an Anglican or just however, just see how the different ways people walk out their faiths, how that impacts the way they interact with people.

I would, it's like a social, it's just, it'd be fascinating to me.

I'd love to do that.

Anyhow, all that to say, denominations, I am still learning all the different, we have so many thousands and thousands of denominations.

I am still learning where this one came from.

This one came out of this one and all these tangled lines.

But I think Hunter and I might have different categories of how we would categorize denominations.

So I'll give my list and then I'll let Hunter give his list.

Just as a, let's see, I would say that the early church through the growth into Rome, and then from Rome and onward, it kind of became Catholicism, and then we got from Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy.

They left because of an ecumenical council disagreement.

Then we have Protestantism, which also came out of Catholicism.

And those are kind of the three big chunks, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

However, just for the sake of categorizing, I would add two more.

There's Oriental Orthodoxy, which I believe came out of Catholicism, and maybe a little bit out of Eastern Orthodoxy.

And then there's another category that I just would call non-Trinitarian Restorationism.

And that's more of a movement where people pushed back on the idea of God being the Trinity, of the Trinity being like a, I don't know what language to use, not a component of God, but...

Well, I think, and you can, I won't take too long on this.

Listener, if you are like, well, I am this, and I need to email us, Parable Ministries, Jesse, no, contact at Parable Ministries.

There it is, that's us.

Email us, we want to hear from you about it.

We are learning too.

But I think what you're getting at with this non-Trinitarian is they deny some aspect of the Trinity, whether that is the Holy Spirit as a distinct person or the deity of Jesus, they deny some traditionally held tenet of the idea of the Christian idea of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit as co-equal as the Godhead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the non-Trinitarian restorationism movement.

Yes.

And then I, and yes.

So in my, I'll give you my buckets.

I like to think of denominations in buckets or umbrellas.

And it gets really weird when the buckets have umbrellas.

But like Jesse said, you had like the Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church of old, Catholic meaning the universal like.

Yeah.

This is it.

And then as, as people did theology and as history happened, we see the splits begin to occur.

And so I think so much today, Catholicism is its, it's almost its own religion.

Not to say, and I, and again, I'm going to be, I'm going to say something I'm going to backpedal a lot this episode.

I'm not saying that there are not people of the Catholic faith that do not believe in Jesus.

I know that there are.

But I think there's even so many underneath Catholicism that in many ways, it stands as a distinct religion from what would be considered like Protestant Christianity.

Same with, same with orthodoxy.

And so in my brain, when I am talking denominations, I'm talking like, I'm talking like evangelical Protestant denominations.

Not to say that we should not talk about Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodox and the others that Jesse has shared.

We should.

But in my brain, denomination is a bucket that begins under Christianity as this Protestant Christianity.

Evangelical.

And so in my brain, there's a handful, there's a number of popular denominations under Christianity that differ.

And I'm not going to go back to like where they came from, but they are primarily like Lutheranism, reformed tradition, the Baptist slash Anabaptist movement, and then this other thing that I, I'm sure there's a term for it, I don't know it.

I call it like modern Christianity, and a lot of that is like the progressive Christian movement, the New Age Christian movement, and things that we're not going to get into it, but those are the buckets underneath, and then there's individual things in the bucket.

And so the question then to me, I think, and I'm going to, I'll just tell you, this group that Jesse has as this non-Trinitarian, I label them as a sect, or in some cases, a cult.

And this is where I get to say, this is a Hunter Hoover.

This is not, I'm not speaking for Parable on that.

That is, we're having a conversation, and that's Hunter Hoover's how my brain categorizes them.

And I will share why I do that.

I have a very specific reason.

But yeah, those are kind of my buckets.

Obviously, like, under-reformed, there's all sorts of things that happen.

There's strict Tulip Calvinists and neo-reformed, and they all have their own things underneath.

But as I can tell and as I interact, that's kind of what I feel.

And I'm sure I left somebody out.

There's probably someone, to put it out there, I'm denominationally homeless.

It's a...

I don't remember where I heard that term, but I heard it and I liked it.

And what I mean by that, it is not that I don't believe in denominations.

They obviously exist, and I actually think they have value.

I just kind of...

I'm kind of like you dumped out the puzzle, and your four-year-old has packed away a piece to the puzzle that is very much doesn't seem to belong there.

That's how I feel with many denominations, even under the umbrella of evangelical Christian.

So that's kind of my...

We don't have to get into our...

Or we do, we could.

But that's kind of my buckets, Jesse.

Do you have any thoughts about my categorizing?

It just makes me think of like, you really enjoyed your toys as a kid, and like categorizing your toys in buckets.

That's the idea where it comes to me.

Homie, I was lining my toys up.

Like, I would line them up in order.

That was me playing with them.

Oh, wow.

I was...

Yeah, and people can psychoanalyze me all they want.

Go for it.

That's pretty fun.

Pretty special.

Yeah, oh, it was special.

Totally unrelated.

I work in special education at a public high school, and yes, it is indeed.

So we all have our stuff, but yeah, that's my...

I'll add a little personal piece here on my side.

I put this in the little series I've done on Instagram and TikTok.

So this is coming from me.

I guess I should probably say this like you did.

So not necessarily Parable Ministries, but this is coming from me.

I have been instructed and under the...

Oh, what's a good word for it?

Framework, I suppose, of...

Like I believe in absolute truth, but that not all truth is equally important.

And so I would categorize that as in three ways, when we're talking about Christian faith, the absolutes of the faith, and that's things like the resurrection and deity of Jesus.

The second category are convictions, which are lower than absolutes, but they're still important, where you come to a reasoned interpretation of scripture and then you come to a position on that.

It could be something like speaking in tongues today.

It's not an absolute of the faith, but it's a conviction some people really, really hold tightly to, and others really don't.

The third category, I would say, is preferences, where that's lower than absolutes.

Convictions, we have preferences, and that's something that I don't like that, or it's something in the sense of like, I don't like drums being played at a church during the worship set.

It's just something as simple as that.

So, that's the framework I have been instructed under.

I like that framework.

And I'll just say, with this, that's how I interpretate or engage with a lot of denominations and stuff.

Like, do we agree on the absolutes?

I can think that, that's great.

And I seek to have Christian fellowship with anyone who proclaims Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, our Savior, who died for our sins and rose again, defeated death, the absolutes.

If we can meet on the absolutes and we have these convictions and preferences that just don't line up, we can still be friends.

And that's something that I try to walk by.

And so if you're listening and you're an Anglican or some other denomination and we say something that might upset you, please, I'm sorry, but I don't know a lot about the Anglicans and it's kind of a lot of things I will probably be saying will be stepped in or steeped in ignorance.

And I apologize for that.

We're just having a conversation about it.

No, I think that's good.

And I echo, like, it's well said.

I am in those those umbrellas of absolutes that that yes, that is key in I'm going to read a scripture.

I think that's going to be the best path forward right now.

Okay, so this comes out of I've been doing a little bit of work on it.

The projects already come out at the time of this episode, but I've been doing work in commentaries for the book of 1 Corinthians.

One of the problems that Corinthians had was they were kind of guffing with each other about all sorts of nonsense.

And so Paul, very early in his letter, like right out of the gate, he says to the Corinthians, he says, 1 Corinthians 1 10, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all, that all of you agree, and that there be no division among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

And then he says, oh, there's been this report.

And he says, what I mean is some of you say, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ.

And he says, is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

And then he goes on to talk about how like, I'm really glad I didn't baptize a whole bunch of you.

But, and I want to note is Paul in there, at the surface level, it can seem like he's saying, wait, we have to agree on everything?

Like red carpets bad, but rather when he goes on to say like, some of you are saying, I follow Paul, and I follow Apollos and others.

He's saying, we all had a different style when we were with you.

And we may have focused on different things.

And you might gravitate towards the teaching of one of us over another, or the leadership of one of us or another.

And that's fine.

But we are all under Christ.

Like at the end of the day, if we can unite under that absolute sunbrella, denomination or not, that is, I think the purpose is to help Christians.

The purpose of denominations, as I understand it, is to help people find a commonality, so that way when they meet and seek to govern themselves as churches, they can begin to set aside those things that are not absolutes for the sake of having unity within specific location bodies.

That is not to say that, and I hope I speak for a lot of denominations here.

I don't know many denominations that would then turn to that and say, ours is the only one that gets like we are the only Christians.

I know there's some, but I don't think there would be many that would say, well, because you disagree on this thing outside of our absolutes, you do not qualify.

If you're part of a denomination that does say that, I'm sorry.

I disagree and that's the key is is I love you and I'm glad you're here and I hope you email me.

No.

So anyway, so that's kind of our buckets.

Jesse, do you want to respond in any way to the fact that I brought up the term sect and cult?

In regards to the non-trinitarian restoration movement?

Yeah, I think there's some I will and I want to stress, I'm not trying to pick a fight with this non-trinitarian restoration group because, and I told Jesse this before we started recording, I think that there are faith groups and traditions inside of the umbrella of Protestant evangelical Christian that function as cults.

I truly believe that.

One just lends itself to present this way more so than others, in my opinion.

But, yes.

Sure.

I'll share a couple of the churches that are under the non-trinitarian restoration.

That would be, I don't know if it really fits.

I didn't think it still existed, but it's Gnosticism is one.

Apparently, it's doing great for itself.

It's thriving.

It's all over the place, and I had no idea.

But Gnosticism rejects the deity of Christ and leans a lot into gaining unique and special knowledge for salvation.

And so there's the non-trinitarian push on that side.

And then another church would be the LDS Church, and also the Jehovah's Witness.

Not Gnosticism, that started kind of a syncretistic movement in the early church.

It's been around for a while.

Yeah, been a long time.

But for the LDS Church and Jehovah's Witness, that was a movement, I forget, I think it was 1700s, 1800s, I think it was 1800s.

It's very recent in the scope of Christianity.

The Seventh Day of Venice also began around the same time.

And so it was a big push.

It was an American revival.

We had several.

It was one of those revivals.

And out of that revival came the LDS Church, Jehovah's Witness, the Watchtower community, and also Seventh Day of Venice.

That all came out of this big revival that different people just went different directions with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think so I'll speak, Hunter Hoover, my apprehension, I'll say apprehension.

My apprehension with labeling those groups as denominations rather than like sect is just a nicer way of saying cult.

Let's just put that out there.

Cults usually have a main guy that's like in charge of the thing.

So, like if you think in your brain, my religion and the answer to the main guy is not Jesus Christ.

Like you might need to figure out who that person is.

But my like, the reason I hesitate to label them a denomination, and if they are, that's fine.

This is my hesitation, is I think that, I think many denominations disagree so strongly, or there are so many disagreements on those absolutes of the faith with those groups, that I think they would fall outside, I think they would fall outside of the scope of Christian faith.

I want to say, that is not to say that a person cannot be raised, we'll just use the LDS Church as an example, does not mean that a person could not be raised in the LDS faith, and have a saving relationship in Jesus Christ.

I am hesitant though, because of what the LDS Church believes about Jesus, I would have a lot of questions about who that Jesus is.

Because of that, I think Christian tradition, and in my brain, I put them in their own bucket outside of, when I talk of Christianity, I personally do not refer to them.

I am excluding them.

I know that's not popular to do nowadays, but I am excluding them.

I'll be the bad guy.

But they're so nice.

Why don't you?

It's not that I don't want them to be.

I do.

I desperately do.

I'm just convinced that what their faith is in is, it stands so different from what Christian faith says we are saved by, that I, not because I want to exclude them, but out of concern for them moving forward, I go, I think this is different enough, that I could question whether this faith is worth having at all.

That's how I would put it.

That's my most diplomatic way of saying it.

Good job, really good job.

On social media, I get like a minute or like a minute and a half to present a denomination.

And so when I'm presenting, it's like, here's the facts.

Like we're going to leave, like they're going to be biased facts because I'm human, but I'm going to try, like I said in one video, I just, I don't have the time to address this and we get like a minute.

And so this just isn't the place for me to share my, my thoughts and my feelings towards this.

So here's just like the facts of how this started, where it came from and what they do.

More of just like a general education of an awareness of what, because I'll be honest, I grew up in a fair, more or less like non-denominational tradition.

And, and that's, that's like a denomination that actively is like nah, against all the other denominations.

And, and so, like I don't know a lot about denominations.

I'm learning, like I'm researching and reading.

I'm going to the, like the actual denomination websites, reading what they have to say.

And then I'm also going to like other people to see what they say about the denominations, just all the different angles and trying to learn that.

But I, I don't know a lot.

I've engaged with, like I've attended a Lutheran church, a, I went to Mass for, at a Catholic, I went to the St.

Paul Cathedral, that was really cool.

And church, a church in Scotland, the Church of Scotland.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, I mean, I've attended, I feel safe saying, at least 100 churches.

And...

Most of that has been non-denominational.

So I can speak to like non-denominational stuff pretty well, but just in regard, I have blind spots, I guess is what I'm trying to say, that I'm trying to fill in with just information, rather than experience.

Yeah.

I can share briefly my background, denominational background, and say why I land on my term.

So the church that I...

It's tough, because we moved churches a lot when I was a kid.

That's part of my story.

But the church I started in as like a young, young kid was non-denominational, but the pastor, he seemed very, very taken to demons and angels as a focus.

Not, you know, he preached Jesus Christ in the gospel, but it was, there was a lot of focus on demonic activity and the work of Satan and, and we left that church for interpersonal reasons with my parents and other people.

And then we attended a Baptist, like a Southern Baptist, traditional Southern Baptist, King James only church.

And we didn't, my parents, you know, I'm like a kid meeting new people.

And then all of a sudden we move and they, you know, they found their home in what at the time was a non-denominational church in the large city near where I grew up in, in Montana.

And that church got a new pastor.

And though I don't ever think they spoke to it, I do like looking back, I say they shifted from non-denominational kind of Baptist leaning to, to reformed.

And so I was a high schooler coming up in this reformed church.

And so a lot of that is like that my thinking I have that in the back.

I went to youth group at what was a non-denominational Baptist church on the other side of the valley.

And then when I went to school out here in Salem in Oregon, Corbin is it comes from this fundamental fundamentalist movement that seeks to promote Christian education as a way to further the gospel in America and really throughout the rest of the world.

And that's a good mission.

The nice thing about Corbin is though it's primarily non-denominational Southern Baptist, a lot of that, you find yourself there, there are other denominations that arrive.

And thus me meeting a lot of charismatic movement students, some Presbyterian students, and getting to know them through Bible classes was super valuable.

And coupled that with, I was church shopping in Salem at the time.

And so I attended probably half the churches in Salem, got to know the Assemblies of God really good.

And I arrived at the non-denominational church, Jesse, that you kind of spoke about.

And yeah, and so I've spent, you know, foot in reformed, foot in non-denominational.

And then I took a job and now I work for a Christian church denomination.

And, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, they're Christian.

It is a denomination, though I am not.

And so I find, as I've interacted with all these, I find value in a lot of them.

And I see a lot of good points and things that I want to hold on to.

But I find that when I try to hold on to this idea here and I go over here, they're like, well, yeah, but that's not what we do with that.

So you need to throw it away.

And I don't like that.

And so I just, I'm kind of denominationally homeless.

And if you hear that listener or Jesse, and you say, well, how is that different than non-denominational?

I have a denomination, I'm sure.

I just, I don't know what it is yet.

And I think denominations are good.

I think a lot of non-denominational would say, well, the denominations are like a necessary evil because sin and the results of disunity in the church, they exist, but we would prefer them not to.

I actually prefer that they do exist.

That would be my, I like them.

I think denominations are good.

And that might be contentious.

And you're like, well, wait, I don't like that.

I like them to be separate.

I like them to not, but I think they have value.

So yeah, that's my denomination soup.

We, don't forget.

So, listener, I'm gonna share a little bit about like, denomination versus sect or in the extreme cases cult.

And if you would like contact at Parable Ministries is a good way to reach out.

So, for me, and I, the working definition that I have that separates these is this faith system, whatever it is, some checks of do they is first, those absolutes of the Christian faith, primarily being the deity and life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the idea that those things are sufficient for our salvation, like they are the only means by which we are saved.

Deviation from that is like the start of that.

But then what really drives it home is when we begin to take either the other things that are not absolutes and make them absolutes, or we begin to create our own versions of things in order to steer the ship a bit.

An example would be, just not to pick on them, but it's the most prominent, the LDS Church and the Book of Mormon.

For lack of a better way of saying it, I would say 99% of Evangelical Christian denominations do not affirm the Book of Mormon as inspired scripture.

Some might believe it is good literature, but I would say 99.9% do not look at the Book of Mormon and say it is given to us from God.

And so the LDS Church does do that.

They look at the Book of Mormon as if it is from God and is as authoritative, if not more authoritative than God's Word, the Bible, Old and New Testament.

And so for me, that begins to put us in, you've created this new literature category that I must now follow and put it over here.

Another example is the...

I want to make sure, I think it's Jehovah's Witness.

They have their own, they have their translation.

So they use...

The Watchtower, yeah.

Yeah, the new...

I think it's the New World Translation.

And they say if you use any other translation other than this, it is...

does not count.

This is the only...

You know, I actually have...

I have a translation.

Oh, I do too.

Yeah, I've got a Book of Mormon guy.

I've...

Really?

Oh yeah.

I have one of those.

Oh yeah.

Oh, it's easy to get one.

Just find a guy walking around in a nice white shirt and a tie and just shout out, you need one.

Oh, he'll hook you up fast.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

They literally give them away like candy out of a white van.

Like...

Okay.

Yeah.

How?

Anyway.

They...

Yeah.

So...

Oh yeah.

You should get it and read it.

It's an interesting read.

So, but these are things that begin to move us towards the sect and cult.

And many of these deny the deity of Jesus, or if they claim the deity of Jesus, their work around is, is that he is not part of the Trinitarian God.

And that's that non-Trinitarian view that you hold.

And they...

all of these have that to various degrees.

The Mormons say that he is God, but he is not God the Father.

He is not co-equal with God the Father.

He is a different entity.

The Jehovah's Witness, to my understanding, believe that Jesus is a brother of Michael the Archangel, thus lessening his status in the spiritual God and then the created order.

And so these are things where they move towards sect and cult.

But the primary, like two primary things that for me is like, when do I start kind of interacting differently, is if they have a person, if there is a human being that, whether they've claimed to receive a message from God or they claim to have some sort of special something that makes them a person that ought to be listened to and they are going against what God's word has already said, to me, we're entering cult, sect, territory.

And the second is, is how does that body of believers treat you when you question it?

That's a big sign.

And that one for me is huge.

And I pray that the evangelical Christian movement is a movement that can handle people's questions.

Because I think the moment that we say if you question it, you can go ahead and get to the back of the line.

I think we have a terrible, terrible problem on our hands.

And in these sect cult groups, the minimum that can happen when questioning is you are silenced.

You can lose the ability to teach, the ability to have influence in your community because you have questions.

And in the most severe cases, you are exiled or excommunicated both from your faith community and in the worst instances from your biological family.

And when those things happen, for me, we have fully stepped into the territory of cult.

And I don't say that to condemn.

I say that truly as a person who has friends who are in those faiths, has friends who have left those faiths, and friends who have given up on any faith at all because of that, I say it from a place of, I want all of those groups to hear and understand the love that Jesus has for them, and the desire he has for them to come to a saving faith in him.

That's where that comes from.

It's not like I wake up and I go, I can't wait to start labeling cults today.

But at some point, for me, I have to begin labeling things for my own progression forward in my thinking.

So yeah, that's me being mean, I guess, a little bit.

I think of it as like, we got to yank the band-aid.

And I cannot stress, and I will just share and I won't be on it long because if I do, I'll be on it for an hour.

Inside of evangelical Christianity, there are cults.

The modern prosperity gospel movement is a cult.

Simply put, just because you affirm the deity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity does not mean you are exempt.

You can still fall into cult-like behavior.

And so I don't say that again, I don't say that to say, well, look at you, you guys, even the umbrella of where I call home in Christianity has fallen into this.

And it is just as frustrating to me as when anyone does.

Yeah.

I'm going to let you talk now, Jesse, because I have talked.

It's good words coming out of your mouth.

We have a testimony on this podcast by a guy named Lanny Eels.

We started this little, we called it Pickled Portraits, I think is what we started.

We only did like three of them.

Oh, we're going to do more one day.

You guys just watch.

Oh, yeah.

That's great.

Okay.

We had our good friends, Jake and Janella Olson do the interview, and we were trying to figure out the microphone situation with that.

That was like our first interview.

So sound quality is not great, admittedly, but the testimony of Lanny Eels, he came out of the Followers of Christ Church.

There's one here in Oregon City, and everything you described, Hunter, of the being silenced for asking questions, the excommunication from your family, all those things are in this testimony of how Lanny Eels and his family got out of the Followers of Christ Church.

It was a legitimate cult that tore apart families and controlled people's information, their actions and things like that.

I mean, it's a scary, scary situation once a religion of any kind, but especially Christianity, because I believe really strongly in the faith, but it's so scary when those things get used as like a power over other people.

That's something I have a really hard time with, and I'll add with my definition of non-Trinitarian restorationism, it's a category, couldn't think of the word, it's a category because they don't match a lot of the absolutes that I hold to.

Right.

So that's why they're not under the Protestant umbrella, they're over in this movement that took place not too long ago, because they veered off the path that I am following right now.

That's not to say that I look at them and I smirk and laugh and have this nice little hate party on my side.

I don't, I enjoy talking with them because it's fascinating, but it's clear, we have different beliefs, we have different faiths and it seems like we worship different gods, but they call themselves Christians.

That's an identifier they use.

They're involved in all of the, what do you call those things when people call up and ask you questions, like polls or graphs or like ratings.

Like when people, surveys, like survey type stuff.

Censuses.

Yeah, they are involved in all of like Christendom, Christianities, they're just there.

And I think it's fair to acknowledge them.

But I also admit, yeah, we're not on the same page on a lot of things.

And I mean, that's the case with a lot of denominations.

They're just not on the same page in a lot of areas.

But once you start using power to control people, that's when things start to get problematic.

And I wanted to, and this could be kind of as we move to close, I wanted to say exactly like for me and I think for Jesse and others, why you could hear us in that and say, well, we have different beliefs and we put this outside.

And we'd say, well, that's just stirring up strife and that's just, and so I'm going to share why I think it's worth disassociating myself and making the statement, like I do not, like when I say I'm Christian, I exclude this.

And the reason is, is I remain unconvinced that the Jesus that these groups hold to is sufficient to save anyone.

And by that, I mean, like the Bible speaks to the deity of Christ as both a means, but also as kind of like a requirement, even in the Old Testament, it points us towards this God coming to us through this Messiah figure, that he is God, that his sacrifice is sufficient to atone for sins.

And I think the minute that you remove something of Jesus' character from him, or you try to diminish something about the character of Christ, and you put your faith in that new picture of Jesus, whatever that diminished or removed thing is, anything that you would do to the person of Jesus takes away from the person of Jesus.

And so, if Jesus is not God, I have a lot of questions about how he is able to live a sinless life, what the implications of that are for how legitimate of a atoning sacrifice he is for our sins.

And so it is not because I want to be a stinker that I say, I don't think, if Jesus is an angel, then why didn't we pick a different angel to, you know, the list goes on.

It is not that I want to create a problem.

I just truly think that getting the person of Jesus right is of so much value in that, like he is, he is the object of our faith.

That I remain unconvinced that changing that Jesus will be then a faith worth having.

And again, this happens within evangelical Christianity.

It is not any Jesus that seeks to remove from the Jesus of scripture or add to him, it takes away from him.

And that's kind of why I make that distinction.

It is not just to be a stinker to people.

I think it is of value to do even when it makes these conversations and conversations in with my friends and others complicated.

Yeah, I just wanted to put that in there.

Yeah, and you know, for the majority of church history, the contention between denominations has been around a lot of church authority.

We have a lot of church authority in Catholic Church with the Pope, and then we have the split with the Anglicans where they didn't want a Pope, they didn't want a Pope, so they have the Archbishop of Canterbury, who just is kind of representative, but then we have like more and more of that, where you just continue getting less and less and further and further away.

And I will say, the further and further we got away, here we are now with heresy.

That's just, like it started with the authority of the church and it went down, down, down, down, down.

And it changed into, like, theological debates about salvation and about, like, predestination and free will and all these things.

And it just continued down this path, where more recent in these non-Trinitarian restoration movements, where they're trying to, restoration in the sense of they're trying to revive faith, like, it got stale.

So they're trying to, like, re-energize it.

And what they ended up doing was creating heresy as a belief, and then that's where we're at.

So that's just to add into there with, like, church history and how things have evolved.

But as we continue in this conversation about denominations, we will probably visit lots of different church history.

We will be looking at different denominations, sharing some interactions that we've had, if we've had any.

And so, you know, this might be a call to action.

If you have a story to share about a denomination, send it out to us.

We would love to hear that.

Heck, we'll even stretch right now, Jesse.

We'll stretch our editing and our capabilities.

If you want to record yourself, you know, send us a voice memo, whether we listen to it or play it.

We would love to hear from you if you have some perspective to share about your denomination that maybe we have either misrepresented or misconstrued in some way.

We'd love to hear that.

But we're gonna, I think we're gonna do more with this conversation about denominations.

I also want to share before we say goodbye, if you want to check out, Jesse has been doing good work regarding denominations.

It's over.

I think it lives primarily on TikTok, but it also is on Instagram.

It's both on.

Yeah, it's on both Instagram and TikTok.

I think it's even on Facebook, but I don't engage with Facebook a lot.

I focus mostly on Instagram and TikTok.

Yeah, and that's parable underscore ministries.

Did I get it right?

That is correct.

Perfect.

I'll cut where I asked and I'll pretend like I knew.

But yeah, go check those things out.

Like Jesse said, they're about a minute, minute and a half long.

And so it's rapid fire denomination.

But there has also been good conversation happening in the comments and we appreciate that.

And we're hoping that this can live as an extension of that when we have these denomination conversations.

Anything else to close us out, Jesse, for the good of the order?

No, perfect.

No, no, this sounds good.

Cool.

Well, thank you for bringing, kind of up what you have done with denominations.

And I'm looking forward to having some more of these conversations in the future.

Yeah.

Well, for now, thank you guys for listening.

You're going to hear Marta next, but yeah, we will see you next time.

Bye, y'all.

See ya.

Outro:

Thank you for listening to Pickled Parables. If you enjoyed this message, please rate us, subscribe, and share with your friends. If you're interested in more things like this, check out our secondary podcast called My Dusky Bible. To stay up to date with all things Parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. Parable is a volunteer organization and we would deeply appreciate your prayers. Thank you for joining us today. We'll catch you later.

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