Church Voices

An interesting article on our little group of churches.

I want to comment on one particular part of this article:

NAME—We have a quirky name. What was pinned on us in the 19th century sounds pretty quaint in the 21st. It doesn’t help our cause. In an age attuned to Madison Avenue’s sloganeering, “Restoration Movement” is definitely not the catchiest bit of nomenclature on the airwaves.

I don’t have a replacement to recommend; and if I did, there isn’t anyone with authority to whom I could make my pitch, so I am not proposing that we rename ourselves. But the editor asked for quirks, and this is one, a definitely delimiting one. You can be sure that many of the churches and Christians who have virtually adopted our plea—or are enjoying the successful consequences of our plea—don’t realize their position was long ago articulated by the leaders of something called the Restoration Movement.

This has always bothered me just smidge about the Restoration Movement. We’re a movement based on something along the lines of “Christians alone but not the only Christians”. The whole idea was to come together simply as Christians, avoiding denominational structures, and other group identifications. Doesn’t explicitly identifying and marketing ourselves as the Restoration Movement work against this philosophy? The two concepts are not just incompatible but are perfectly opposed to each other. These two concepts are the Push Me Pull Me of theory and reality.