Latest / Real Life Theology Podcast / Baptism Numbers: Restoration Movement Insights | Scott Sager

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Baptism Numbers: Restoration Movement Insights | Scott Sager · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Welcome to the Real Life Theology podcast. Today we're launching
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  a new series featuring talks from Renew.org's
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  Amazing Baptisms event. In this opening episode, Scott Sager
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  introduces the event and shares some of the history behind the Restoration Movement.
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  Anyway, my name is Scott Sager. I'm the VP for Church Relations and
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  Spiritual Development at Lipscomb. I also teach in the Bible department.
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  All 3 of my courses are tomorrow, so I'm here all day today and grateful
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  to be here. I also preach for the Church of Christ in Green Hills,
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  which was also called the Granny White Church of Christ for
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  most of its tenure. Delighted that you're here.
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  I've been at Lipscomb for about 14 years. I moved here from Texas because
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  I felt like Aslan was on the move, and I've never felt that more than
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  I do right now. It's a spiritually alive time for
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  the next generation, and it's fun to get to work with them each and
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  every day. But over the course of the last 10 years or so,
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  I've been on a quest to serve Churches of Christ and to serve Churches
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  of Christ well, but to also be getting to know
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  our partners, our neighbors. I mean, if we did that
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  23andMe thing where you spit into a little cylinder and
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  you send it off and it sends it back and it tells you what your
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  DNA is, you know, the people with the closest DNA to
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  mine is the Independent Christian Church. And so, I've been
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  trying to figure out who are these people? Tell me about their
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  churches. Get to know their leaders. I've spent a lot of time
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  in Louisville and in other places. And so, today, what you're
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  going to notice is that we're going to hear from people both from the Churches
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  of Christ and from the Independent Christian Church. And we're going
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  to be hearing about churches that are really seeing
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  evangelistic growth through baptismal conversion.
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  And I thought you may be a little bit curious to find out who
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  is the Independent Christian Church. And so,
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  what I wanted to do is to— oh,
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  okay, yeah, great, okay— is to understand that the Independent
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  Christian Church and the Churches of Christ are both formed out
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  of the Restoration Movement. They both also
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  look at Cane Ridge as a seminal event in
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  their history. They both claim Barton W. Stone as
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  one of the people who had great influence in shaping them.
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  And then the events that happened at the Springfield Presbytery
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  in 1804 were events that
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  both groups also claim. Thomas and
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  Alexander Campbell and the Disciples of Christ in the event that Jason just
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  mentioned in 1832 are also part of
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  all of their heritage. And so what
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  we discover is that the Civil War played
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  a role in separating us, and during Reconstruction,
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  2 events really began to push these
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  2 groups in divergent directions.
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  One was instrumental music, and the other one was cooperation around missionary
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  societies. And so, after Reconstruction,
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  what you noticed was that there were urban
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  churches in the North, rural churches in the South.
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  And by the time the 1906 census came,
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  David Lipscomb was asked, are these 2 still one group
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  or 2? And he said, sadly, they've become 2 different
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  groups. And so, there became the Disciples of Christ and the
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  Churches of Christ. Then what happened was
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  that inside the Disciples of Christ, there became a
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  group of people who didn't like the way that the Disciples
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  were moving. They were downtown churches moving toward liberal progressivism.
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  And they began to form a conference that met every year
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  starting in 1927 to try to keep them on point
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  and to try to maintain an evangelistic fervor
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  inside the Independent Christian Church. And so,
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  they existed inside the Disciples until around the year
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  1964.
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  And that's when there was a final break between the Disciples of
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  Christ and the Independent Christian Church. And so, the Independent
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  Christian Church became its own group in the '60s.
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  And what we're noticing today is that these 2
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  groups are discovering each other, finding out the
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  things that they have in common, and understanding that there's
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  things that we can learn from each other. And so, uh,
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  if you wanted to know about the demographics, the Churches of Christ have
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  about 12,000 churches and about 1.4 million
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  people who are a part of their groups, and the
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  Independent Christian Church has about 5,000 churches and
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  roughly the same amount of congregants
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  as well. So, what we are discovering is
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  that these 2 groups have a great deal in common,
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  especially the things that we hold most true: biblical authority,
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  local autonomy, believers' baptism,
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  um, and then weekly observance of the Lord's
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  Supper. And so what I wanted us to understand is
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  that there are groups that are now asking us to think
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  about ways that we can work together, maintaining our distinctives,
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  being who we are, maintaining our congregational autonomy.
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  But how can we learn from each other? How can we encourage each other?
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  How can we support each other? How can we become better because
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  of this partnership that we have? And so I'm
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  excited about this event and the opportunity that it has
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  for us today, uh, to grow and to encourage
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  each other. And if you're part of the Independent Christian Church and you're here
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  today, could you raise your hand just where you are? I thought you might want
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  to meet some of these folks during the day and get to know them
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  and, uh, make sure that we are celebrating what
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  we have in common in Christ. I really appreciated what Jason
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  had to say about what happened in 1932— or 1832,
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  where Alexander Thomas Campbell, Barton W.
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  Stone, everybody began to come back together again.
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  And it was Raccoon John Smith that said we should
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  no longer talk about being an Old Light or a New
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  Light or or any other kind of light. He said
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  we should all believe that Jesus Christ provides all
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  the light that any of us could ever need.
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  Thanks for listening to the Real Life Theology podcast.
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  For more content on disciple-making and theology,
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  visit renew.org.