I guess it depends on what the gravitational center of your church is. What do you orbit around? Is it the cross? Is it the gospel? Or have you made the center of your church other theological distinctives? This morning I read a word from Wayne Grudem regarding the importance of maintaining humility in our theological convictions and practices.
"It is ironic and tragic that denominational leaders (pastors/churches, addition mine) will so often give much of their lives to defending precisely the minor doctrinal points that make their denominations different from others. Is such effort really motivated by a desire to bring unity of understanding to the church, or might it stem in some measure from human pride, a desire to retain power over others, and an attempt at self-justification, which is displeasing to God and ultimately unedifying to the church?" - Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine p. 61-62.
That's well said. We need not only a humble orthodoxy but a humble orthopraxy. We err if we pursue one to the exclusion of the other. Moreover, to the degree that we gravitate around these distinctives and not the gospel we will be unhealthy as a church. The gravitational center of our churches must be the Gospel or we will be deformed. May God help us to hold our distinctives with humility and gravitate around the gospel. If you're interested in hearing more on this, I'd encourage you to listen to a sermon I recently preached entitled, "The Gravitational Center of Heritage Baptist Church"
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