The Restoration Movement began with a simple but powerful conviction: that the church should return to the teachings and practices of the New Testament, setting aside human creeds and traditions in favor of the Word of God. That vision still matters. It’s why many of us were drawn to the Churches of Christ in the first place. We believe that Scripture is sufficient and that the unity Jesus prayed for can be found when we follow Him without the baggage of denominational systems.
But there’s a difference between honoring a biblical pattern and turning particular interpretations into laws. Over time, some in our fellowship have begun to treat the Restoration itself—not the gospel—as the standard of faithfulness. In some cases, the desire to restore has hardened into a kind of gatekeeping: a system of inherited expectations where every question already has an approved answer, and any deviation from traditional interpretations is met with resistance or exclusion.
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Jesus warned against this kind of religion. He spoke directly to those who elevated men’s traditions over God’s commands and strained out gnats while swallowing camels. His rebuke wasn’t aimed at those who loved Scripture but at those who used it to control others rather than to form a people shaped by justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).
This post is not a rejection of the Restoration Movement. It’s a call to reclaim its heart. If we truly want to restore New Testament Christianity, we have to be willing to let the Word of God correct us—not just everyone else. That means being honest about where we’ve elevated tradition, confused uniformity with unity, and made ourselves gatekeepers of the kingdom instead of servants of Christ.
How Legalism Creeps In
One of the greatest strengths of the Churches of Christ has been the desire to take Scripture seriously—not just in theory, but in practice. We want to do things God’s way. We believe there’s a pattern revealed in the New Testament for how the church should live, worship, and teach. That instinct is good. But when the pattern becomes a law in itself—or worse, when it becomes a tool to draw rigid boundary lines—what began as faithfulness can quietly shift into legalism.
Legalism doesn’t always announce itself. It often shows up in well-meaning efforts to “do church right,” but over time, the emphasis shifts. Obedience is measured not by Christlike character or spiritual fruit but by external conformity. Fellowship becomes limited to those who agree with every point of interpretation. Grace becomes something we talk about cautiously rather than something we rely on fully.
This kind of thinking shows up in how congregations treat things like Christmas and Easter. Because these holidays aren’t commanded in the New Testament, some have concluded that even recognizing them—let alone teaching or preaching about the birth or resurrection of Jesus in connection with them—is wrong. But this reaction is based more on a fear of tradition than a careful reading of Scripture. These responses often ignore the actual history of how the early church marked significant events in the life of Christ—something we’ll explore more in a later post.
More importantly, they disregard the clear teaching of Romans 14, where Paul tells the church not to pass judgment over matters like the observance of special days:
“Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds... Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” (Romans 14:5,10)
Paul’s point is clear: not every difference is a matter of sin, and not every practice must be identical for believers to walk together in faith. But when legalism takes root, the impulse is to regulate everything—to assume that whatever is not explicitly commanded must be forbidden and that any departure from inherited patterns is evidence of compromise.
This is where patterns turn into pharisaism. It becomes more about drawing lines than making disciples. When that happens, the pattern ceases to be a witness to God’s wisdom and becomes a substitute for the gospel itself.
If we genuinely want to follow the pattern of the early church, we can’t just imitate its forms. We need to recover its spirit—a spirit of grace and humility willing to teach the truth boldly and be patient with those still growing in their understanding. The danger isn’t in loving the pattern. The danger is forgetting what the pattern was meant to point us to: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new creation He came to form in His people.
Sectarianism and the “Only Ones Going to Heaven” Mentality
In many circles within the Churches of Christ, there’s an unspoken assumption that we are the only ones who have truly restored the New Testament church. While few may say it outright, the idea that salvation is limited to those who interpret and practice the faith precisely as we do has shaped how many congregations view the rest of the Christian world. The line between biblical conviction and sectarian pride can become dangerously thin.
It wasn’t always this way. The early leaders of the Restoration Movement didn’t claim to be starting the “one true church,” nor did they suggest that Christians had vanished from the earth. They believed the gospel was still active wherever people clung to Christ, even if buried beneath tradition. Their call wasn’t to make people part of their movement but to call all believers to unity based on the Word of God alone.
But over time, that humility gave way to something more rigid. In some cases, the call for biblical faithfulness has been replaced by a mindset that equates our tradition with the totality of the church. Other Christians are viewed with suspicion. Differences—sometimes over matters Scripture treats with freedom—are treated as gospel issues. Entire fellowships have split over things like Bible class structures, support for children’s homes, or the number of communion cups. What began as a plea for unity has turned into a pattern of division.
This is not the vision Paul had in mind when he wrote about the one body of Christ. In Ephesians 4:4–6, he lays out the foundation of true unity:
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
This list does not exhaustively address every possible issue, but it points to the essentials: Christ, His gospel, and the new life shared in Him. It calls us to unity in the essentials—not uniformity in every practice. Just before this, Paul calls believers to practice humility, patience, and bearing with one another in love. It is a vision that prioritizes grace without compromising truth.
When we confuse uniformity with unity, we stop seeing fellow believers as brothers and sisters in Christ and begin viewing them as threats or competitors. When we define faithfulness by how different we are from “everyone else,” we aren’t holding to Scripture—we’re holding to ourselves.
This mindset doesn’t just distort how we view others—it also shapes how others view us. To many outside the Churches of Christ, we appear closed off, prideful, and unwilling to acknowledge the sincere faith of Christians who follow Jesus but differ from us in form or structure. Our insistence on being “the only ones” has often pushed people away—not because of the gospel, but because of our posture. When the message of Christ is overshadowed by the defense of a tradition, we become known not for what we stand for but for what we separate over.
Restoration must never become isolation. We must be willing to stand on truth, but we must also remember that the kingdom of God is bigger than any one fellowship. Our plea will only be heard with credibility when spoken in humility.
When “Biblical Literacy” Means “My Interpretation Only”
The Churches of Christ have long emphasized the importance of knowing the Bible. We’ve championed open Bibles, daily study, and the idea that every Christian should be able to give book, chapter, and verse for what they believe. In many ways, this emphasis on biblical literacy has been one of the movement’s greatest strengths.
But that emphasis hasn’t always encouraged deeper understanding in practice. It’s often reinforced narrow conclusions. In many congregations, “studying the Bible for yourself” really means “learning to repeat the approved list of answers.” People are taught how to defend certain conclusions but not how to wrestle honestly with the text. New interpretations, even those grounded in careful exegesis, are met with suspicion. And anyone who begins to ask hard questions or explore a more nuanced reading of a familiar passage may find themselves subtly—or not so subtly—pressured to fall back in line.
This isn’t biblical literacy. It’s interpretive control dressed up in biblical language.
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The problem is not a high view of Scripture. It’s the assumption that our traditional conclusions are always correct and should never be revisited. When we elevate inherited interpretations to divine authority, we treat honest questions as threats and serious study as rebellion. We train people to memorize the “right” answers, but we don’t always equip them to engage the Bible deeply, patiently, and faithfully.
This creates a culture where Scripture becomes a weapon rather than a witness. Texts are quoted to shut down conversations rather than to open hearts. Sermons stay on safe ground, avoiding the uncomfortable tension that often comes with serious reflection on Scripture’s depth and complexity. Over time, biblical literacy is replaced by doctrinal memorization—and a fear of anything that doesn’t fit what we already think we know.
This is not how truth is preserved. It’s how it gets distorted. The church doesn’t need less engagement with the Bible; it needs more. But that engagement must be honest, humble, and open to correction. We must be willing to admit that sometimes our conclusions need refinement—that tradition, even well-meaning tradition, can be mistaken.
Now, that being said, I don’t believe in accepting every private interpretation. I’ve spoken on this elsewhere and will continue to say that Scripture must be interpreted in faithful communities. But the keyword there is “faithful.” The point isn’t for everyone to say the exact same thing all the time and just parrot their favorite talking points. It’s about faithfully evaluating what we think we know against the revelation of God’s word.
If we truly believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, then we must also believe that it can withstand our questions, shape our assumptions, and even correct our traditions. Otherwise, we’re not submitting to the Bible, we’re asking the Bible to submit to us.
A-Historical Theology
Another weakness that has surfaced in many corners of the Churches of Christ is a near-total disregard for church history. In our desire to return to the New Testament church, we’ve often spoken and acted as if nothing of spiritual value happened between the first century and the early 1800s. While we claim to be rooted in the early church, we have often functionally ignored the voices, struggles, and insights of the generations before us.
This is not how the Restoration Movement began. Early leaders like Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell read widely from the church fathers. They were students of Christian history and believed that learning from the past could help clarify—not compromise—the gospel. But in many congregations today, there is little to no awareness of what the church has wrestled with across centuries: how doctrines were defended, how heresies were confronted, how the faith was preserved under persecution, and how early Christians understood Scripture before a formal canon.
The result is a shallow ecclesiology that assumes the Restoration Movement started from scratch. This approach isolates us, weakens our ability to engage with others, and often leads to unnecessary errors that the broader church has already dealt with and resolved.
It also leaves us vulnerable to caricature. Without historical awareness, we’re unequipped to respond meaningfully to claims made by Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or even well-read evangelicals who appeal to early church tradition in defense of their practices. Worse, we risk confusing our own recent interpretations for apostolic doctrine simply because we haven’t taken the time to understand what Christians believed and practiced before us.
Engaging with church history doesn’t mean we abandon Scripture. It means we read Scripture with humility—aware that we are not the first to do so. It helps us test whether what we believe is truly rooted in the gospel or simply the byproduct of our particular time, place, and culture.
If we truly believe in restoring the faith of the early church, then we should care deeply about how that early church lived, worshiped, and understood the Scriptures. Ignoring church history doesn’t make us more faithful. It makes us more vulnerable to repeating the very mistakes we claim to reject.
The Fear of Theological Depth
In many Churches of Christ, there is an unspoken suspicion of theology itself. While we often emphasize “just teaching the Bible,” that usually means staying within a narrow, familiar set of topics and conclusions. Sermons and Bible classes are kept simple and safe. Words like doctrine and theology are treated as overly academic or even dangerous. Those who press deeper into Scripture, explore historical theology, or raise difficult questions may be met with resistance rather than encouragement.
This fear has produced a shallow teaching culture that prioritizes basicness over depth, repetition over reflection, and comfort over challenge. It’s easier to preach the same handful of sermons on baptism, instrumental music, and church attendance than to teach through Revelation, wrestle with divine sovereignty, or explore the implications of the resurrection on Christian ethics. Many congregations are unaccustomed to hearing anything they haven’t heard before. When something new is introduced—even if it’s more faithful to the text—it’s often dismissed as liberal, intellectual, or suspiciously “denominational.”
This resistance to theological depth has long-term consequences. It leaves Christians unequipped to deal with complex questions about suffering, justice, salvation, or the character of God. It makes it difficult to engage meaningfully with other traditions and produces churches that are wide in activity but shallow in understanding—full of conviction but light on formation.
But theology isn’t speculation. It’s simply thinking rightly about God—and everything else in light of Him. The church’s calling is not just to recite Scripture, but to understand it, apply it, and be transformed by it.
The New Testament doesn’t call us to avoid theology. It calls us to grow into the fullness of Christ. That’s impossible without deep, Spirit-led reflection on the Word of God. If we are going to be a people of the Book, we need to be willing to press into the hard parts of the Book, not just the comfortable ones. Otherwise, we’re not forming mature disciples. We’re just reinforcing inherited habits.
The Way Forward: Faithful, Not Fearful
The Churches of Christ were never meant to become just another denomination with our own traditions to defend. We were founded on a plea: to return to the Word of God, to pursue unity through truth, and to strip away the excesses of human systems that cloud the gospel. That vision is still worth holding on to. But holding on to it requires courage—not to repeat everything we’ve inherited, but to test it all again by Scripture.
It is not unfaithful to ask hard questions, disloyal to study church history, or liberal to seek deeper theological understanding. These are acts of reverence—evidence that we take the Word of God seriously enough to let it correct us, even when it challenges long-held assumptions.
The way forward is not to abandon our convictions but to recover them at their source. We must call the church not just to pattern but to purpose, not just to correct form but to Christ Himself. Restoration has to be more than nostalgia. It must be a living, ongoing call to reform—to always ask whether what we’re doing truly reflects the Spirit, message, and mission of the church revealed in the New Testament.
That means being willing to change when Scripture demands it, refusing to make our tradition untouchable, pursuing unity over uniformity, and holding out the gospel with grace, not suspicion.
Jesus did not die to make us guardians of a system. He died to make us His people—formed by His Word, filled with His Spirit and conformed to His image. If we want to restore anything, let it be that.
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