A church should be a place where people can seek Christ freely, ask honest questions, and discover truth without fear of being reprimanded for straying from "official" doctrine. Unfortunately, many churches—especially institutional ones—tend to prioritize maintaining theological boundaries over fostering genuine spiritual exploration.
If a church is truly about following Christ, it should welcome seekers of truth rather than pushing them away for questioning or discovering insights that don’t fit a particular theological framework.
Jesus Himself often clashed with religious authorities who were more concerned with rigid tradition than with truth. He welcomed sincere seekers, even those who challenged the religious status quo. If churches today truly followed His example, they would encourage open discussion, personal discovery, and a deep connection with Christ rather than just enforcing doctrinal conformity.
Online communities can be a refuge for people who think outside the box, especially when local churches are more rigid. The internet allows for discussions that might not be welcome in traditional church settings, and it connects people who are searching for a deeper, more authentic faith experience.
It’s unfortunate that in-person faith communities often struggle with this. Ideally, a church should be a place where people can wrestle with questions, share insights, and grow together without fear of being shut down or excluded. But when that’s not possible, finding like-minded people online can still be a meaningful way to pursue truth.
The Holy Spirit is active in guiding, comforting, and revealing truth. If a church doesn’t allow space for that kind of openness to the Spirit’s leading, it can become more of an institution than a living, dynamic community of faith. However, usually a church wants to stay affiliated to, or stay a member of an organisation with a set of statements of faith, and there are leaders who ensure the church does not stray. If the Holy Spirit gifts lead in directions the leaders find might be a problem, they sometimes ask the person to leave. It happens over and over.
Most churches prioritize institutional unity or a set of doctrines over the genuine work of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is leading someone in a direction that challenges the status quo, and that person is then pushed out, it raises serious questions about whether the church is truly functioning as a body of believers open to God’s guidance.
This situation shows a tension between institutional control and spiritual freedom. Many church leaders might fear that allowing too much divergence from the official teachings could lead to confusion or division, but the result is often stifling the very work of the Spirit. The risk is that churches become more about managing people and preserving traditions than about nurturing people’s personal relationships with God and empowering them to follow the Holy Spirit’s promptings.
I admit I have experienced this firsthand multiple times, where revelations or insights were seen as a threat, rather than something to be explored or embraced. Usually it seems to be by design. God wants churches to grow. This means that they grow in faith, which means their faith grows as they learn. They are not to move beyond Christ, but to grow ever more upwards into Christ. It takes gifts with revelation component to bring this about. They have to choose whether to grow, or to let themselves be ever static, and reject anyone who introduces growth. It is like the age old political divide between progression and conserving a status quo, except here the lord is not an earthly political electorate, but the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet our leaders are human and that is God’s will. But God wants new wine vessels for His new wine.
Both the church leaders—who are human—and the leaders of the denominational bodies, synods, councils, and the like, must navigate the tension between preserving what is foundational and being open to fresh moves of the Spirit.
Stephen D Green with ChatGPT
