Why I'm Not Denominational (But I Am Christian)

People ask me all the time what kind of church I come from. The honest answer is that I have been blessed by many of them, and I refuse to plant my flag on any one of them. I am a Christian who follows the Bible. That sentence sounds simple, but it has cost me a few things, and it has given me far more.

Before I say a word about the dangers of putting tradition above the text, let me say something else first. The body of Christ is enormous, and I am grateful for it. I have learned from teachers in nearly every tradition you can name. The hymn-writers, the missionaries, the translators, the church planters, the quiet grandmothers who prayed for revival before I was born. I am not the first believer to open a Bible and I will not be the last. The church is older than me and bigger than my preferences. So nothing I say here is meant to swing a stick at people Jesus died for.

The Trunk And The Branches

Think of the faith as a tree. The trunk is the gospel. Christ crucified for sinners, risen bodily, returning in glory, salvation by grace through faith alone in him alone. That is non-negotiable. That is what makes a Christian a Christian.

Then there are branches. How you understand baptism. How you order a worship service. How you read the end-times charts. How you structure church leadership. These matter. I do not want to pretend they do not. But they are branches, not trunk. And when a believer mistakes a branch for the trunk, two ugly things happen. They start judging other Christians by something the Bible never made a salvation issue, and they start defending a tradition with energy they should have spent loving Jesus.

Paul saw this in Corinth almost immediately.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?

Notice that the people Paul is correcting were not following bad teachers. Paul, Apollos, and Peter were all faithful. The problem was not that the teachers were wrong. The problem was that the people had started identifying themselves by which teacher they preferred. Their loyalty had drifted from Christ to camps. Paul calls that a division, and he calls it foolish.

What Jesus Prayed For

The night before he died, Jesus prayed something that should make every label-loving believer pause.

That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The unity of the church is not a nice-to-have. According to Jesus, it is part of how the world believes the Father sent the Son. When believers are publicly fractured along tribal lines, the gospel itself looks suspect to a watching world. That does not mean we paper over real doctrinal differences. It does mean we hold every smaller difference loosely enough that our oneness in Christ is louder than our disagreements.

Paul builds on this in Ephesians. "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:4-6). Seven ones. He could have multiplied them by adding distinctives. He did not. He stayed on the trunk.

The Warning Jesus Gave

There is a moment in Mark's Gospel where Jesus rebukes the religious leaders with a sharpness that should make all of us nervous. They had built up a tradition about washing hands ceremonially, and they were using that tradition to make Scripture say things it did not. Jesus answered them with Isaiah.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And he said to them, You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!

A few verses later he says they are making the word of God void by their tradition (Mark 7:13). That word void should land hard. It does not say their tradition was inferior to the Bible. It says their tradition was canceling the Bible. They had wrapped so many human rules around the text that the text could no longer breathe.

That is the danger of any human system, mine included. Not that systems are evil. Systems can be helpful. Catechisms, confessions, liturgies, study guides, even the way you organize your morning quiet time. All of those things can serve the Word. But the moment any of them stops serving the Word and starts overruling it, you have a problem Jesus already named.

Why Denominations Exist

I do not want to pretend denominations appeared out of nothing. Most of them were born from a genuine attempt to be faithful to Scripture in a particular generation or culture. Believers wrote things down so the next generation would know what they believed and why. There is wisdom in that. And there are still real disagreements between Christians about important matters. I am not advocating a lazy mush where nothing matters.

What I am advocating is humility. The honest believer admits that no tradition has gotten everything right. None of them. The honest believer also admits that the saved are saved by Christ, not by a confessional document, no matter how good that document is. If your tradition has helped you love Jesus and read his Word more carefully, thank God for it. If your tradition has become the thing you actually defend, repent and re-center.

Following The Book, Not A Brand

Here is what changed for me personally. The moment I stopped trying to be a good representative of any single tribe and started trying to be a faithful student of the Bible, everything else got simpler. I stopped asking, what does my camp say about this verse? I started asking, what does this verse say in light of every other verse on the same topic? Sometimes the answer lined up with my upbringing. Sometimes it did not. Either way, I now had a court of appeal that was higher than any human voice.

This is why I built Bible Study Pro the way I did. When you open the app, you are not stepping into someone's theological lecture. You are stepping into the text itself, with tools that help you cross-reference, observe context, and see how the whole Book talks to itself. The interpretations come from a believer who has tried to stay out of the way. The authority comes from the Word.

A Word To The Tired

If you have been bruised by a denomination, do not let that bruise turn into bitterness against the body of Christ. People will fail you. Churches will fail you. I have failed people who trusted me, and other believers have failed me. But the gospel still stands. The Book still speaks. The Spirit still teaches. And there are faithful brothers and sisters in every kind of building waiting to walk with you.

You do not need a label. You need a Lord. And you already have one.

What This Looks Like On A Tuesday

Maybe all of this still feels abstract. Let me bring it down to ground level. What does it look like, on an ordinary Tuesday, to be a Christian who follows the Bible without flying a denominational flag?

It looks like being able to worship with brothers and sisters whose worship style is not your favorite, and praising God for them anyway. It looks like reading authors from traditions you were never raised in, taking what is faithful to Scripture, and gently setting down what is not. It looks like refusing to talk badly about other Christians at the dinner table, even when you disagree with them, because Jesus is listening.

It looks like reading the Bible with both eyes open. One eye on the text, one eye on yourself, asking what assumptions you are bringing that the text might want to correct. It looks like being teachable. The moment you become unteachable, you have stopped being a disciple, and disciple is simply the New Testament word for student.

And it looks like loving your local church anyway. I am not anti-church. I am the opposite. The local church is the place Jesus has chosen to display his glory until he comes back (Ephesians 3:10). Find a faithful one, plant yourself, serve, give, show up. Just do not confuse the local church with the universal one, and do not let the brand on the door become bigger in your heart than the Christ whose name is on the cornerstone.

So open the Bible without flinching. Let the clear verses interpret the unclear. Let the Author have the final word. And love every believer who confesses Jesus as Lord, even the ones whose Sunday looks nothing like yours. We are family before we are anything else.

May the trunk be enough for you, and the branches be a blessing.

Soso lobi.