Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Heritage

As the Disciples of Christ moved toward denominational structure and liberal theology in the twentieth century, thousands of congregations quietly stayed independent; the separation formalized gradually, and the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ were first listed separately from the Disciples in the 1971 Yearbook of American Churches. The fellowship cooperates through Bible colleges, campus ministries and conventions — for decades the North American Christian Convention — rather than any denominational body.

Theological family

Restorationist evangelical: believers' baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins, weekly Lord's Supper, the New Testament as the church's constitution, and no creed but Christ — held with instruments in worship and with broadly conservative evangelical theology.

Who decides what

Strictly congregational: each church is autonomous under its own elders and staff; parachurch institutions — colleges such as those at Cincinnati, Johnson and Ozark, mission agencies, conventions — connect but never govern. There is no headquarters to call.

What a first-time visitor would find

A visitor typically finds contemporary evangelical worship — full band, screens, practical biblical preaching — with communion every single Sunday, a combination almost unique to this fellowship at megachurch scale; baptisms by immersion are frequent and celebrated.

What it has always cared about

Weekly communion carried into thoroughly modern worship; evangelism and church planting as the expected work of every congregation; Bible colleges as the fellowship's connective tissue; and growth — several of the largest congregations in America stand in this stream.

Its gift to the wider church

This fellowship demonstrated that the Stone-Campbell plea could scale: weekly communion and believers' baptism thriving in some of the country's largest and fastest-growing churches, exporting the table-every-Sunday instinct into the broader nondenominational world its congregations helped shape.

Commonly confused with

With the a cappella Churches of Christ — same family, no instruments, separate fellowship since 1906; with the Disciples of Christ, the mainline stream it left; and with generic nondenominational churches, from which its baptism-and-table pattern distinguishes it — many of its congregations carry names like Christian Church or Community Christian Church that hide the heritage.

Range of views inside it

Congregations range from small rural churches to multisite megachurches; views vary on Calvinism (broadly resisted), on women's roles, and on how tightly to hold restorationist distinctives versus broad evangelical identity.

Moments this body was part of

• 1906–1971 — The unity movement itself divides

  The movement founded on "Christians only" divided in slow motion: the 1906 religious census first listed the a cappella Churches of Christ separately from the Disciples, and through the mid-twentieth century the independent Christian Churches parted from the Disciples over missionary societies and restructure. One plea, three streams.

  The hardest lesson in the whole story: even a movement organized around unity can divide. Its three streams have spent recent decades in deliberate conversation — the centennial of the 1906 separation was marked by joint communion services.