Articles of Interfaith Discipleship

We accept that human knowledge of truth is limited by mortality, for now. In this interfaith ministry, we neither reject nor disrespect religious institutions, traditions, or their formalized creeds and theologies. We are careful to acknowledge that no one among us has walked the full ranges of heaven to measure and catalog its glories, to count and classify its inhabitants, or to chart the order and hierarchy of its councils. We firmly maintain that any souls who profess such knowledge, even basing themselves in scripture, are speculating beyond the bounds of wisdom God has set. "Secret things belong unto the Lord our God." We constrain this ministry to the "weightier matters" of which Christ spoke: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. What God has chosen to reveal in plainness, we receive with gladness and confidence. What He has not revealed, we do not pretend to possess. We walk humbly in merognosis† — avoiding sophistries of gnosticism, agnosticism, skepticism, atheism, and any '-ism' that divides faith in Christ. "We know in part, and we prophesy in part" until the day of glory when we shall know as we are known. Within this honest posture, we will not bind the conscience of any fellow believer with doctrines built from our own speculation or from the theologies of others. The "weighty" things of God are plain. They exist in plainness for our salvation. The "secret things" are not ours to dictate nor dogmatize. We also hold that no soul is barred from Christ or from salvation for lacking a perfect understanding. Christ said, "You believe in God; believe also in me." He also said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." He never said "be sure to sort out every theological question before you love and accept one another." Interfaith fellowship is governed by what Christ taught, what the prophets witnessed, and what the Spirit whispers to the humble conscience. Mysteries and judgment we leave to God.

† See companion essay: Merognosticism — A Plain Confession of Partial Knowing.

We believe in God, the Eternal Father of our spirits, whose purposes are good and whose love for His children is without limit. His power sustains our existence. Nothing exists apart from His knowledge. Nothing is beyond His care. He is God in the Highest. Of the eternal functions and hierarchy of heavenly populations we remain carefully neutral and avoid speculation for the sake of interfaith unity. We also believe that no mortal human can claim to know the full nature of God. We only know as much as He chooses to reveal plainly, for God said, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

We believe God created this world as a place where His spirit children live within bodies of mortal flesh, walk with divinely-endowed agency, encounter opposition of good and evil, and grow from within the experience. More than these general statements of faith we will not dogmatize within an interfaith fellowship. We also believe that this life is not an accident. It is not a punishment. The fall of humankind from paradise — the thorns, thistles, and sweat of mortality — were not beyond God's plans. We now live in a sphere of existence God designed for our benefit, where every soul has room to choose, to fall, to rise, and to be made new through His grace. The pains and pleasures of this existence are not evidence that God has abandoned us. Mortal experiences provide the developmental conditions under which our character is being shaped. We are free to either deny the Creator or to see the blessings inherent in this existence. Either way, these conditions remain, and the shaping takes place.

We receive God's word through the witnesses of prophets, mortal men and women, whose testimonies survive despite their own human imperfections because the revelations were of God and not of mortal origin. We worship God only. We respect but do not worship prophets or their scriptures as idols. God spoke in ages past. God speaks today. God will yet speak in generations to come. We believe God chooses imperfect servants, broken vessels, for His own reasons that we often cannot understand.† It is our responsibility to study scriptural teachings while avoiding the mistake of leaning to our own understanding alone. We require the guidance of God's Spirit to receive His saving truths and to live our lives as He intends. What God has spoken plainly through these channels has been preserved for us; what He continues to speak, He confirms by His Spirit. God does not contradict Himself, but our imperfect knowledge tempts us to contend with one another. Each follower of Jesus Christ must prayerfully weigh beliefs, doubts, and personal conscience against the Scriptures God has given. Each faith tradition recognizes its own canon of scripture; we contend for none of these boundaries, but exhort all souls to search their scriptures diligently for what brings them to Christ.

† See companion essay: Broken Vessels — Universal Fallibility and the Reach of Grace.

We proclaim that in a generation of His own choosing God sent the promised Messiah — the true Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Divinity made flesh — as the living image of the Father's heart. What the prophets spoke imperfectly and only in part, Christ embodied in whole and in perfection. Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world, the divine Son sent from the Father. He was born of Mary, lived a sinless life, taught the way of the Kingdom, healed the sick, forgave the broken, rebuked the proud, and loved without measure. He went about doing good. He suffered beyond our understanding for our sins, died upon the cross, and rose again from death in glory on the third day. He is the one perfect vessel in whom the will of God has been made flesh, and the living reference by whom every other witness and follower is measured.

We believe Jesus Christ offers entrance to the Kingdom of God through His Gospel of Salvation. We seek to understand what we are being saved from, and what we are being saved for—though we may never fully comprehend these things in mortality, for "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."

Salvation from our sins and mortality through the grace and atonement of the Son of God is central to the grand arc of God's Plan: from our creation in His image, passing through redemptive transformation, to receiving God's image in our countenance, unto the day that we shall be like Him—flourishing and glorified together as co-heirs with Christ of the Kingdom of God.

We do not claim to know the full mechanisms by which salvation operates, nor ought we to reduce it to any single aspect of the whole that Christ taught plainly: the justice, mercy, grace, and atonement freely offered in Him; the faith in God and belief in His Son, the prayer and repentance by which we turn to Him; the rebirth, and the love, forgiveness, peace, humility, patience, gentleness, and kindness by which His life grows whole in us; the obedience, discipleship, perseverance, and good works that bear fruit to His glory; and the joy, sanctification, and sealing by the Holy Spirit that open unto resurrection, immortality, eternal life, and glorification.

We claim no right to sit upon the throne of Christ, judging no soul to be saved or condemned in His place. Rather, we remember that our charge before Christ is to love God and neighbor without ceasing, to profess our faith in Him, and to keep His commandments.

We proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is not only promised for a distant day. Christ proclaimed it at hand, within reach of every soul who would open ears to hear, heart to feel, and eyes of the spirit to see. He calls us to enter it now, in this mortal life, and to begin to live eternal life now, while we yet walk in flesh. Eternal life is not merely an unending existence beyond the grave — it is the life of knowing God and fellowship with His Son, which begins the moment we come to Him and can continue without end. We do not have to wait for death to find His rest. We do not have to wait for perfection to taste His joy. We do not have to wait for glory to know His peace. We can feel His peace now. We can perceive His power and Spirit operating in our lives to the healing and renewal of our souls. These fruits are the witness that the kingdom has already come to those who receive it and who seek to build it. The Father's will was never that we should merely endure mortality while awaiting Him. His will is that we should live — really live — beginning now.

We receive every soul who comes to Jesus Christ as brother, as sister, as fellow child of the same Father. We love them whether they return our love or not. We honor them whether they honor us or not. We hold them as family whether or not their tradition recognizes ours, and whether or not ours has treated them rightly. We believe the body of Christ is larger than any single denomination and older than every division. We are not indifferent to Christian institutions or traditions, but we insist that the walls that often separate the Lord's people were not built by Him. We refuse to defend them†. Nor will we defend any doctrine or teaching made into a weapon against a brother or sister who names His name. We will not return insult for insult, exclusion for exclusion, or suspicion for suspicion. We will sit at the table with every soul who has found Christ, and we will leave the door open to every soul still searching for Him. The community we offer is the fellowship He purchased with His blood — free, plain, and without price.

† See companion study: Contention, Gatekeeping, and the Reach of Christ.

We hold Jesus the Christ as the fixed point by whom every soul may find the way to God. He is the way and the life. He does not move. He does not change with the seasons, the pressures of an age, or the shifting claims of men. What He taught is what He taught. What He was is what He was. He stands as the unchanging North Star above every traveler's path.

Trusting Him is more important than understanding Him. One's relationship with the Divine takes precedence over the accuracy of their doctrine. Correct doctrines and personal knowledge are good, but faith in Him is better. Our hope is that, as we submit to Him, God will make our paths straight.

We also hold that the Spirit of God is given to each honest conscience as a compass within — a witness that responds to divine reality, drawing us toward what is true and warning us away from what would destroy us. But the compass in our own hearts is housed in mortal flesh, and mortal flesh carries its own magnetism — our wounds, our fears, our desires, the pull of those we love and of those we resent. So the compass of the Spirit in us must be calibrated always to the North Star of Christ Himself. When the inward whisper points us away from what Christ taught and what Christ was, we know the compass has been disturbed, and we return our sighting to Him.

We further hold that the scriptures are given as the sure map — the testimony of those who have traveled before us, marking the way and pointing always to the same North Star. They experienced their own wrestles with God, and through them the Spirit spoke truth that still lights the way when the wilderness grows dark. Without the map, the compass alone cannot tell us which pathways we have entered or which perils lie ahead.

Each time we find ourselves lost or uncertain, we have the navigational tools to reorient and find our way again. We hold that the disciple's walk does not require the approval of any person, tradition, or institution beyond the approval of Christ Himself, who is the only righteous and eternal Judge of human souls.

We do not walk by the inward whisper alone. We do not walk by written word alone. We walk by Christ, who is the living reference, and by His Spirit, who leads us toward Him and never away. The Father who knows our hearts will guide every soul who comes to Him in sincerity, and the Son who bids us follow has never led any honest disciple astray.

We believe God speaks to every conscience open to hearing Him, whether we feel worthy or not. He subtly guides each of us through the daily paths He knows, through circumstances He sees, toward a character He is shaping. Our daily choices matter. Grace is not a license to sin; it is a divine trait and power. The Christian life is a walk, a maturing, a becoming. We follow the example of our Savior, who went about doing good, and we continue to go about doing good whether or not our efforts are authorized, recognized, or rewarded by any institutions or traditions of mortals. No soul finishes in a day. No soul is beyond His reach.

We call to repentance anyone who would think to manage or restrict the grace of God toward any of His children. Gatekeeping of salvation and other modern woes of the Pharisees will not be tolerated within this interfaith community. We exhort all souls in the name of Jesus Christ, do not dare to condemn anyone over differences in doctrine or theology. Every soul who seeks Christ is under His protection. Every one of them is precious to Him. Christ expressed His fierce protective nature over all who seek Him. His warning: "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." If any part of this warning offends you in the least degree, good! It was intended as a call to Christlike love, a call to repentance from contentions and judgments — a call that would not offend the pure in heart.† The standards for this interfaith community? "Deal gently with the ignorant and misguided" and "accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters." Again we caution, do not stand between the Shepherd and His lambs.

† See companion essay: Lord, Is It I? — A Call to Repentance.

We are children of God by birth. We become disciples of Christ by covenant. We surrender our will into His and then we live it. Not merely profess it. Not merely believe it. Live it — in the body, in the home, in the world, every day of the week, as reality. We embrace His name as our central identity, staking our lives on Him. We accept that He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, and instituted ordinances to remember Him.

We recognize that His apostles were sent into the world and taught, "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." Those who feel the Spirit of Truth in their teachings and begin to believe in Christ always ask, "What shall we do?" The answer was as plain then as it is now: "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." Each disciple must feel after God's Spirit for what it means to be "born of the water and the Spirit" and how to enter into covenants with Christ.

We walk the path Christ set before us — Himself being the way, the truth, and the life. We pray always and "faint not." We endure in faith through joy and trials as God refines this new identity into mature discipleship over a lifetime of spiritual sanctification by the power of His Spirit. We seek to enter into God's Kingdom, which is at hand — now, in this moment — for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and willing hearts.

We believe this life is not all there is. The grave is not the end. Christ's resurrection is the promise and the proof. What was sown in sorrow will be raised in glory; what is given to Him is not lost. Every soul will be raised to stand before God in naked honesty, and every tear and smile will be accounted for. What form that accounting will take, and what glories await, we leave to God, who is faithful and who keeps His promises. We find hope in God's word that declares we were made to fellowship with Him in His glory. Christ has spoken. Christ is trustworthy. This is enough for us.

We proclaim that Christ is enough. His gospel is for the flawed, the weary, the wounded, and the searching. His invitation is to every tribe, in every tongue, and across every tradition. He receives all who confess His name. He is in our hearts. We have accepted Him as our divine Savior with or without perfect doctrinal understanding. We follow Him with or without the permission or approval of others.

We stand with Him, and we welcome all who seek to understand, whether or not they share the same belief in God, or don't yet know what they believe, or even if they hold to creeds that differ from the basic foundations professed within these articles. In the spirit of peace, we build on those beliefs we hold in common, and exercise careful restraint and Christ-like patience regarding things that might divide us. We are all God's children.