Why I'm not part of any denomination

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This is a companion to the video "Why I'm Not Part of Any Denomination (and You Shouldn't Be Either)." It is for the person who loves Jesus and cannot find a room where they fit. Maybe you were pushed out. Maybe you left on your own, with your questions in a bag over your shoulder, and nobody came after you. Maybe you are still in the building every Sunday and feel invisible in it. Somewhere along the way you picked up the idea that the church is a place with a sign out front, and that if you are out of standing with the place, you are out of standing with God. I want to show you, from the text, that the idea is false, and that the truth is a great deal better.

Here is how to use it. Watch the video first if you can. Then open your Bible and keep it open beside you, because I am going to ask you to check nearly every claim against it. Read "The teaching" straight through; it carries the whole argument on its own. Then work "The passages" slowly, with a pen, and save "Questions to sit with" for last. Answer those on paper. Something happens when you write an honest answer down that does not happen when you only think it.

One thing before we start. Being right about the word "church" does not save anyone. Faith in Christ does. I have friends all over the map on this: Catholic friends, Orthodox friends, Baptist and Presbyterian and Pentecostal friends, who love the Lord and love people better than I do on most days. I am not asking you to leave anybody. I am asking you to read what the Bible says the church is, and to let the text, rather than a label, tell you who you are and where you belong.

Here is why it matters. If the church is an institution, then belonging is a membership question, and somebody else holds the roll. If the church is people, then belonging is a covenant question, and only Jesus holds the roll. Those two beliefs produce two very different lives, and one of them has kept a lot of good people homeless for a long time.