What are your essentials?
by Bill Blair on 14/01/08 at 10:38 pm
This past Sunday my pastor, Rick White, gave a message on 1 Corinthians 1:10-17. You can watch the sermon by clicking here. As you may know, this section of Paul’s letter deals with divisions that existed withing the church at Corinth. One of Pastor Rick’s points was to “Know the difference between Essentials and Non-Essentials.
The essentials that he is referring to are essentials of doctrine. Essentially(pun intended), the idea is to stand firm on essential doctrines while exercising grace and love on all secondary issues in order to advance the overall mission of the Church. I believe that this way of thinking is correct, but the trick is determining what is essential and what is not.
One of the best treatments on this subject was developed by Dr. Al Mohler, the president of Southern Seminary. Mohler developed a system called theological triage where he categorizes beliefs into 3 levels. First level beliefs are those beliefs that are central to the Christian faith. Second level beliefs are those beliefs that tend to divide people up into denominations. Third level beliefs are those beliefs that people may differ on widely, but don’t hinder people from worshipping and serving together. Mohler maintains that beliefs on all three levels are worth debating, but wants people to recognize that some can be set aside for one reason or another while others must never be set aside.
Read Dr. Mohler’s article on theological triage here.
For my T. P. C. brothers and sisters: Clearly, a second level belief we share is that it is not only permissible, but actually quite appropriate for people to have spiked hair and wear Chuck Taylors while leading the congregation in worship. Or is that a first level belief?
Recent Comments