Teaching Doctrine

We start with the classical doctrines – those teachings the church has said are the essential and has continually taught as essential.

Our purpose is to understand the faith we already have. (won’t touch every subject nor have all answers)

We study doctrine as a community of faith. (we are asking the question. What do we (church) believe? Not what do I believe? We acknowledge that doctrine is what the church teaches and believes and that we who make up the church can believe it or not. Our personal beliefs do not define what the church teaches. Doctrines are the basic convictions or confessions of the church.

We recognize that for every belief of the church there is a corresponding disbelief – what the church refuses to believe.

Doctrines are what the church argues about. This ongoing conversation about beliefs is within the Christian community and the differences in points of view are part of life in the community of faith.

There is no one cource for doctrine as there is for Bible study.

Teaching doctrine emphasizes the place of the mind in our believing.

While our conversation about believing goes on within the Christian community, it does not stay there; for Christian must live in a larger world. And at some point, if not almost constantly, we must be able to say what we believe and why we believe it.