History of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA)
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- čas přidán 23. 01. 2021
- The Evangelical Free Church has connections to Lutheranism, The Evangelical Covenant Church, Pietism, and many other movements and national groups. This video will cover their history.
Thank you for this! Would be interested in hearing the history of all the different reformed denominations That started in the Netherlands. Specifically Christian Reformed Churches, Protestant Reformed Churches, United Reformed Churches, Netherlands Reformed Congregations, and Heritage Reformed churches. Why did all the splits happen? Who were the leaders? Etc. thank you for all your work!
This one interested me enough I ordered two of the main pieces of literature they suggest (Evangelical Convictions and The Significance of Silence). While I have no plans on leaving my Conservative Baptist Church I wanted to read what the EFCA considers the universally accepted orthodox positions of the true Church.
As I understand it, there is also a Covenant Church (formerly Swedish Covenant Church) which is similar to the Evangelical Free Church. They have a school in Chicago called North Park University and have some churches in the Chicago area.
Yes, the Evangelical Covenant Church czcams.com/video/4Okx5IaEKjg/video.htmlsi=5aU5qSXkLe-8QYPP
Thank you so much !!
Wow, I didn’t know they started as Lutheran. That was quite an evolution from Lutheran to... pretty much Baptist?
Never mind, I watched this and they’re different: czcams.com/video/Ngkp-mTZ4KQ/video.html
My head is spinning with all the branches simply in Lutheranism.....
hey can you do a video on sedevacantism? love your videos, keep it up!
I think well known preachers like DA Carson and Chuck Swindoll are part of the EFCA.
Actually, Chuck Swindoll pastored an EV Free Church in Fullerton, CA but graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary. His current pastorate is Non-Denominational.
A good proportion of DTS grads in the 70-90's we're influential in pastoring in EFCA churches. Although not as prominent or owned by DTS, eschatologically they we're highly influential in dispensational thought and pre-mill thought.
Mind boggling, this one.
Have you watched the video on "ask the pastor" on pietism and piety? Might be interesting
What is your belief and what church do you attend? Love your channel......
I think he said in a prior video (I’ll link to it if I can find it) that he is a professor at an Independent Baptist seminary 🙂. Needless to say, if he were to let that bias his presentation, I’d certainly not be a fan of his channel as I grew up ELCA and we tend to do things a lot differently. However, I’d say he does a fair presentation and goes quite in depth. I respect and appreciate that 🙂. I love learning more about the different denominations and schools of thought. I’m always learning something new watching his videos. I hope he keeps doing them!
Ayyy my people
My mother's people as well. My maternal grandmother was a native of Sweden.
My best efforts to do good, be good, think good are burning dung.
Protestantism makes my head spin too. Just believe what you want to believe and if you change what you believe that’s OK. Go start your own “church”! Crazy.
I think that’s quite a mischaracterization and strawman of the general Protestant ethos. It’s not “believe what you want to believe,” but rather “be intellectually rigorous and honest; be genuinely guided by the discernment of the Holy Spirit within you; don’t let other men (who are inherently corrupt) do your thinking for you.” We have creeds, we have a standard for what we believe. There are beliefs that are considered heretical. But the ethos is that because all men under God are equal, and that the Bible is freely accessible to everyone make it so that every individual can assume responsibility for her own formation of her beliefs. The Bible, creeds, and talking to church elders and pastors are all encouraged as ways to form one’s beliefs (of course, with the Bible being the most authoritative of these). You’ll probably still find issue with this, which is valid. But don’t misrepresent the ethos of Protestantism.
My understanding of this subject may be inadequate but I think I do understand why some Christians wish that every Christian would emphasize the same things and in the same ways as all other Christians do. It was a desire for uniformity that led to persecution of dissenters in western Europe during the dark ages.
Because he died before I was born, I seldom refer to my paternal grandfather as my “Grandpa”. He was Lutheran until my father was about twenty but he became dissatisfied with the idea that the only parts of the Bible that were important were those that were included in the liturgical readings on Sundays - readings from the Psalms, the Gospels and the Epistles. There may have been other German Lutheran pastors who encouraged study of the entire Bible (as translated by Martin Luther) but my grandfather’s Lutheran pastor told my grandfather that other parts of the Bible weren’t important.
Big mistake!
There are some other things that have resulted in the creation of new denominations but one factor is that some Christians have wished to emphasize things that either were not emphasized by their parents’ denomination - or that the younger generation thought needed to receive more emphasis than their parents or their parents’ pastors had given them.
Martin Luther had become a monk and had entered a monsitary before he even saw the entire Bible between the covers of one book. Before that, he wasn’t even aware that such a thing existed. For more than a thousand years before that, most of the clergy of the Roman Church had discouraged laity from owning or reading Bibles.
The Roman Church had not, so far as I know, encouraged the teaching that people need to earn or deserve God’s grace but the official doctrine was that God’s grace is received only through the sacraments. Some (many?) priests did not hesitate to imply that the sacraments should be administered only to people who did what the priests wanted them to do.
Martin Luther’s reading of the Bible convinced him that God’s grace - including forgiveness of sins - may be obtained by each person directly from God and that it is a free gift that we cannot earn or deserve. My perception is that Luther would have preferred that the priests be instructed to avoid giving the laity the impression that there were things they must do to qualify for God’s forgiveness. If that - and certain other biblical principles - could have been incorporated to Luther’s satisfaction, I think he would have preferred reform of the Roman Church rather than the creation of a new religious organization.
Something similar could be said about other reformers such as the Wesley brothers. I don’t think the Wesley brothers wished to create a new and separate organization. I think they would have preferred that the entire Church of England begin emphasising sanctification - what John Wesley called “the second blessing”.
Here is a list of things I think tend to discourage reforms (and reformers). Taken together, they virtually prevent reforms.
Hierarchy
Creedalism
Dogmatism
Too much reliance on traditions (heological, liturgical or otherwise)
As long as new organizations tend to devolve in these four ways, reformers will continue to find it too difficult to reform existing organizations. This next suggestion is thinking so far “outside the box”, few people will seriously consider it but here it is anyway: Instead of new organizations formulating creeds (lists of doctrine intended to distinguish between orthodoxy and heresy and requiring people paid from tithe funds to affirm and promote), any new organization could eschew ANY creeds and, instead, create a list of things that are considered antithetical to the specific emphasis (or emphases) of the new organization and then prohibit people who are paid by the organization to preach or teach from teaching those things UNLESS they clearly indicate that their own way of understanding or teaching is not the only way of understanding the biblical evidence.