1. Why is the Ministry Council proposing a change in our Statement of Faith?

In 1948, when LAC became a part of the Conservative Christian Congregational Conference, the conference Statement of Faith sometimes became identified as our own. However, it was never officially adopted at LAC, possibly because of the difficulty in acceptance presented by the process required by our church bylaws. Thus, this second doctrinal formulation has appeared in many communications venues of the church even though it has no organizational authority in the life of the congregation.

In more recent years, seeing the need for a more official formulation of our faith for those in spiritual leadership, LAC also established a third doctrinal formulation called the “Leadership Covenant.” Therefore, three different expressions of our core beliefs now exist, not only creating confusion but potentially leading to problems if doctrinal error is taught in LAC ministries.

As the Ministry Council (MC) has read the mandate in 2 Timothy to “keep the pattern of sound teaching” of the gospel, to “guard the beautiful deposit” of the gospel that has been revealed in Scripture, and to pass it on to future generations until the work of God is completed (2 Timothy 1:8 –2:2), it has sensed God’s leading to clarify the statement of our faith in order to carry out the mandate.

The MC also is committed to LAC’s final authority for what we believe and how we live to be the Scriptures. Thus, we are convinced that regular review of the statement of faith in the light of Scripture is important for our church family—indeed, for any local church.

2. What is being proposed? Where can I get a copy?

3. Why is it so long?

• Doctrinal alignment – LAC has many teaching venues associated with its ministries. On one side, the SOF must be thorough and robust enough to address serious doctrinal error—as well as flexible enough on non-essential issues to allow the kind of breadth that God has established in our 115-year history at LAC.
• Delivery of the faith – The MC has been guided by Colossians 1:28 –29: “We proclaim Christ, admonishing each one and teaching each one with all wisdom so that we may present each one fully mature in Christ. To this end we labor with all the energy that God so powerfully works in us.” It is evident that teaching biblical wisdom is essential to the spiritual growth that is to happen in each church member. We believe that the Statement of Faith, centered in the gospel, is to be the foundation for that teaching ministry and thus must be complete enough to guide us.
• Determination of leadership – We believe that it is essential that our pastors and elected leadership both know the faith and are committed to the essentials of biblical faith. Thus, the SOF is proposed to be our measure for the orthodoxy of our spiritual leadership as well as for training future leadership.

The focus of the proposed SOF is, therefore, more internally focused, i.e., for disciplining of false teaching, teaching/training in biblical truth, and identifying leadership within the church. Because of this, brevity has not been our most pressing concern in its formulation. However, the MC has also recognized the eventual need for a more concise “this we believe” statement based on our SOF that will be focused on external constituencies (e.g., first-time visitors). Because of the confusion created by the multiple doctrinal formulations mentioned in FAQ #1, we decided that it is wise first to establish our more complete Statement of Faith before we put together yet another document.

4. Have other theologians been consulted?

5. Will this impact our relationship with the conference we belong to?

Lake Avenue Church is a member of CCCC: Conservative Christian Congregational Conference.

As a member of a conference, each member church is provided the discretion to form its own statement of faith, providing it does not compromise the doctrinal position of the conference. This is different from belonging to a denomination where matters of doctrine are determined by the centralized denomination rather than by the individual member churches.

6. Do I have to subscribe to the Statement of Faith to be a member at Lake?

Technically, today, you would have to subscribe to the Statement of Faith (SOF) to be a member. However, the Ministry Council has agreed that we will ask the congregation to change that requirement of the bylaws to be consistent with the biblical criterion that one becomes a member of the Church, the family of Christ, when he or she accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior. This change is much easier to make than a change to the SOF. The Ministry Council chose to wait until the SOF change was approved to change this provision of the bylaws; so, if the SOF change is approved by the congregation, we would expect to change the membership requirement at the November Regular Meeting of the Congregation. The exact wording of this change has not yet been written.

7. What is the process for adopting a new Statement of Faith?

The Statement of Faith (SOF) is an element of the bylaws of LAC. The bylaws require that a change to the SOF section of the bylaws be approved by three quarters of ALL of the members of the congregation who are eligible to vote. Elsewhere, the bylaws call those eligible to vote “Active Members.” Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the church does not have a reliable list of the Active Members, so the process to change the SOF required us first to identify the Active Members and determine their number so that we could compute three quarters. Then, we needed to find a way to collect votes from the Active Members.

After reviewing the criteria for Active Member status, the Ministry Council determined that the only way we could list the Active Members was to survey the people affiliated with LAC and ask them if they satisfied the criteria. We did this by distributing, collecting, and recording the information from a Membership Survey card. Over 1,500 people responded to this survey and indicated they were Active Members. This process is continuing, and we expect the total number of Active Members to approach 2,000 people. For a church with weekly attendance of nearly 4,000, Active Membership of 2,000 may appear to be low, but the criteria of the bylaws are quite stringent. In any event, the Active Membership criteria focus on recent member activity and activity of a nature (attendance, giving, service) that only the member can determine, so that an occasional survey seems to be the only way to accurately determine Active Membership.

As to a method to collect votes from the Active Members, the bylaws provide that the vote to change the SOF can be made at a Regular Meeting of the Congregation or by written ballot. A Special Meeting of the Congregation is needed to introduce the proposed change. The Special Meeting was held on April 6, and at it the congregation passed a motion saying that the vote would be primarily by written ballot but that votes would also be collected at the June 1 Regular Congregational Meeting. The congregational motion also stipulated that the written ballot ask that the person voting affirm that he or she satisfies the criteria for an Active Member and that they sign the ballot, both to assure that the church receives only one ballot per member and that they can be reconciled to the Active Member list of the church database. Reasonable privacy is assured by assigning responsibility for tallying the votes to those who maintain the confidential contribution records of the church. The official counting of the ballots will take place at the end of the June 1 Congregational Meeting.

8. Who is eligible to participate/vote regarding the new Statement of Faith?

The LAC bylaws define two classes of members: Active and Associate. Only Active Members may vote. Active Members are those who have completed the membership process, attend worship services regularly, give regularly to the ministries of the church, and serve actively in the ministries of the church. Other than completing the membership process, no degrees of compliance with these requirements are stated in the bylaws. The Missions and Evangelism Division is assigned by the bylaws to adjudicate compliance. However, as the information to determine compliance with these criteria must come primarily from the member, the Division leaves interpretation of the words “regularly” and “actively” primarily to the discretion of the member. The Division is available to help the member if he or she so desires.

9. How does the two-year period apply?

At the Congregational meeting on April 6, 2011, a two-year period was mentioned in conjunction with satisfying the criteria for Active Membership.

Article V, Section 4a of the LAC bylaws says that the membership of an Active Member (eligible to vote) may be moved to Associate Member (not eligible to vote) when for a period of two years or more the Active Member, if he or she is able, has (a) not resided in the community, or (b) not worshipped regularly with the church, or (c) not contributed to the support of the church, or (d) not shared in the church’s ministry. It also says that when, after a reasonable effort and two written attempts at contacting the whereabouts of an Active or Associate Member cannot be ascertained, that member may be removed from the rolls. Thus, people who have been members for more than two years and who have not fulfilled the duties of an Active Member for two years are not eligible to vote. Obviously, people who have been members for fewer than two years are not covered by this provision.

10. Where can I get a ballot?

Ballots are available around the campus literature racks. In addition, we will have an electronic copy of the ballot for people to download here.

11. What happens if the proposed Statement of Faith is not adopted?

The Ministry Council began talking about the possibility of updating our Statement of Faith three years ago. At each step along the way we have prayerfully sought the Lord and His will for Lake Avenue Church. We believe that He has led us to this point and believe that He will continue to do so. We have not made any plans about what we might do if the Statement of Faith is not adopted. Regardless of the outcome of the Statement of Faith voting process, the Ministry Council will continue to seek the Lord and trust Him to lead us forward.