The church is still a divine creation…The church, and only the church, can make that claim; and the church, and only the church, is regulated in her governance by the explicit teaching of the word of God on the subject. Parachurches…cannot look to scripture for detailed governance structures.

I have been asked why I seem so critical of parachurch organizations, when I work for one myself. Good question. The following thoughts seem apposite.

First, there are different kinds of parachurch organizations. Seminaries, conferences, theological and ethical co-belligerent societies etc. “Parachurch” is thus a very broad, descriptive term which seems applicable to any formal group of Christians who have joined together for a specific purpose.

My concern with parachurch groups is not with all such groups but simply with those that might either be mistaken for a church or become the primary locus of individuals’ Christian church identity. I do not think that typically applies to students in relation to their seminaries; though it might, say, apply to churches or Christians who identified themselves first and foremost as Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals churches, if such exist. When the Alliance in the US, or the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship in the UK do their job — supporting Christians in specific contexts but not replacing the church — then not only do I not have a problem with them; I actively support them.

Second, if identity is my major concern, then accountability is next on the list. This is not to say that parachurch groups of any of the kinds listed above cannot have accountability structures adequate to their limited needs – provided those needs remain limited; but it is to say that the Bible only gives details of accountability structures in the New Testament for the church; and it does this because only the church is a divine institution. Every other formal gathering of Christians is of human origin, no matter how helpful and positive it may be in assisting the work of the kingdom.

But, someone will say, the church often fails just like the parachurch. Of course she does: the church is not infallible and often make mistakes. She is staffed by fallible, sinful human beings; what do you expect? She did so in Paul’s day; but, significantly, even as she failed, Paul’s answer was not to cast the church structures into the waste paper basket and start again from scratch.

In 1 Timothy, he does not tell Timothy to try some new form of governance; rather he outlines precisely the kind of person who should be an elder and also instructs Timothy, as an office-bearer to remain there to tackle the false teachers. He also notes that he, Paul, has handed a couple of them over to Satan (presumably a reference to excommunication) so that they might learn not to blaspheme. Connect this to his comments on discipline in 1 Corinthians, where he instructs the congregation to do the same, and we have the outline of ecclesiastical accountability: elders of a certain quality and congregations with certain responsibility for their corporate well-being.

So the argument that, hey, the church fails so one really cannot criticize the parachurch for the same is not quite that simple. When the church fails, she fails not because of her structure but because of the sinners who staff the same.

The church is still a divine creation, radically different in origin and nature from any other human institution; eldership is also a divine institution; and the congregation is a divine institution too. The church, and only the church, can make that claim; and the church, and only the church, is regulated in her governance by the explicit teaching of the word of God on the subject. Parachurches can honour more general biblical principles but they cannot look to scripture for detailed governance structures.

Again, this is not to deny the value of all manner of different parachurch organisations, from seminaries to anti-abortion groups. It is, however, to stress the importance of a clear separation of church and parachurch because, as noted above, only the former has divine sanction and is thus qualitatively different in origin and nature from any members of the latter.

Carl R Trueman is Departmental Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. This article is reprinted from the Reformation 21 blog and is used with their permission.