Correction: Northwoods Community Church (nwoods.org) is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches. FECMinistries.org

"The Painted House" by John Grisham has a great paragraph about churches where his character says something to the affect that Presbyterians have a lot of grace, Methodist have a lot of works, Baptist aren't concerned because they know they have the inside track to God. As long a people are in it, your church and denomination will have room for repentance, reformation, and revival.....get over the address on the sign in the church's front yard..

Hmm...Open Theology (God does not know the future), Radical Pacifism, left wing politics, partial-preterist eschatology (Matthew 24 all fulfilled in 70 AD, Book of Revelations fulfilled in 70 AD, we are in the millenium). Quite a mixture.

Just a note most Anabaptists (mennonites, brethern denoms and ind. Churches) are NOT left-wingers. That is a small loud minority. Most of us are conservative to moderate theologically ablnd take Jesus' teachings seriously and literally - therefore are wholisti cally pro-life opposing and working for non-governmental solutions to war, abortion, death penalty and any human torture/expdrimentation. Biblical peacemaking has a very different motivation than liberal pacifism although it can look similar from fly-over level.

Some Anabaptist denoms do not have the word Mennonite nor Brethern in their names BTW. I believe the church group above is Anabaptist but no longer uses the word mennonite bexaus eof the confusion and also the little left wing that does exist tends to use mennonite but not evangelical-anabaptist which the global majority of us are in tehology and practice.

Hi Popseal,

As to Boyd's Open Theism, many seem to have misunderstood what Boyd actually teaches and professes. It is not that God doesn't know which possiblity is to come about, it is that he already planned for any that could have come up. THis is far different from what most people think about his position. The following link is a good synopsis from Boyd on his position and even though I disagree with him on it, he is NOT saying God doesn't know the future by any means. http://reknew.org/2008/01/what-is-open-theism-2/ As to the 'radical left-wing politics" charge, that is to be nice, hogwash. Even just one blogpost from Boys demonstrates that he seeks the biblical answer in the face of those demanding a 'biblical' answer that is more about their own political desires than what the word of God says http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2007/10/biblical-call-to-justice.html

I have to agree with Jim. Rick's post borders on slander and totally misrepresents Boyd's theology. Boyd also is very careful to acknowledge that this view is not a core teaching and is in the realm of "opinion" rather than orthodoxy. Nevertheless, it is a welcome and needed response to the increasing influence of Calvinism in the church.

Jim, semantics. According to Boyd God does not know the future (because the future does not exist according to Boyd) however, He planned for any possibility that could have come up. Could be A, could be B, could be C. As to "nice Hogwash", Greg aggressively criticizes the Religious Right. He lost 1000 of his 5000 members over his political liberalism according to the New York Times.

I wonder if God knows whether Boyd will pick Mennonite or Brethern. According to Boyd, God knows everything perfectly, including the future, however this is a curious kind of knowing. It consists of knowing all the possible options and all their consequences because of God’s great intelligence. As Boyd says, “But since the future is partly comprised of possibilities, God knows it as partly comprised of possibilities.” That is very different than what we normally conceive of as knowing and predicting, with any certaintity, future occurences. Boyd goes on to say, “People sometimes worry that if the future isn’t foreknown as exhaustively settled, God can’t promise to bring good out of evil.” This is his belief that “the future isn’t foreknown” by God as exhaustively settled. Mennonite or Brethern? According to Boyd, God can’t tell you which way he will choose but He has contingency plans for either possibility.

Well I can tell you, having been in so called "baptist" mega churches in Minnesota, ( EBC, etc ) That WoodlandHills is as close to the teachings of Jesus as you can get. I applaude Dr Boyd for his boldness and clearly being able to see truth as presented by the word of God.

Denomination hopping is taking a lot of forms these days. While Boyd's church maybe going to one of the Mennonite branches, an older Mennonite congregation in my home area is joining the Evangelical Free Church.

Why join a denomination? Why not do the New Testament thing and keep it simple? Stay independent, and be friends with the others.

The churches in the NT were not independent. Paul was overseeing them, and in his letters to the churches, he corrected false practices that were being brought in. Example-"Oh you foolish Galatians!". And in 1Cor chapter 5 he scolds the church for allowing an immoral member to continue to meet with them while living an immoral life with his mother-in-law, and he scolds them for not throwing him out of fellowship,

Greg Boyd has very confused theology. I go into this in a lot of detail in my book on Amazon: CrossCurrents: Making Sense of the Christian Life. I stop short of declaring Boyd to be a heretic, but he is certainly espousing an extreme form of Arminianism. One chapter of my book explores the concept of time, showing how Open Theism have a naive view of the topic.