I understand the appeal of the nondenominational church. In an age weary of faction, weary of institutional decline and weary of ecclesial infighting, the promise can sound fresh: No inherited baggage, no denominational machinery, no old quarrels: just Jesus, the Bible and the local church.
I do not dismiss that instinct. Some of it is plainly a reaction to real failures. Denominations often have been vain, slow, bureaucratic and more interested in preserving themselves than in serving the gospel.
Daniel Coffey
Even so, I remain cautious about nondenominationalism.
I say that not as someone eager to defend denominational bureaucracy for its own sake, but as a minister formed in the International Council of Community Churches. The ICCC was itself shaped by a desire to resist sectarian rivalry and to pursue Christian unity in the life of the local church. Its own constitutional language describes it as an interracial and international communion seeking “Christian unity in local, national and world relations,” and the World Council of Churches describes the ICCC as a body committed to ecumenical life in the communities where its churches are planted.
That location gives me sympathy for the protest, but it does not give me confidence in the cure.
Too often, nondenominationalism presents itself as though it were the absence of tradition. In practice, it is usually something else: Tradition without naming itself, theology without disclosure, polity without candor, inheritance without memory.
“Too often, nondenominationalism presents itself as though it were the absence of tradition.”
A church may drop “Baptist,” “Methodist,” “Presbyterian” or “Pentecostal” from the sign. It still has convictions about baptism, ministry, Scripture, worship, discipline and authority. Those convictions do not evaporate when the name does. They simply become less visible.
That is part of what makes me uneasy. The older ecumenical vision was not an invitation to become blank. It was an invitation to become more charitable, more cooperative, less vain. It sought deeper fellowship across Christian differences, not the disappearance of those differences into a fog of generic language.
The historic “Community Church” impulse, at its best, did not ask churches to forget who they were. It asked them to stop treating their separateness as a virtue in itself.
Even the language of “nondenominational” should make us pause. It is not some ancient or apostolic term recovered from the New Testament. It is a modern word that arose in a world where denominations already existed. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of “nondenominational” to 1858 and “undenominational” to 1871. The claim, then, is not that a church has somehow escaped history. The claim is that it has chosen to describe itself over against a religious world already shaped by denominational life.
That distinction is worth keeping in view, because a denomination is not merely a bureaucracy. Russell Richey has described the denomination as a voluntary ecclesial body, a form of church life that took shape under conditions of religious liberty and plurality. One can criticize denominationalism sharply — and I think Christians often should — while still admitting that denominational life at least tended to be more legible. A church named itself. A person walking in the door had some sense of its theology, its worship, its structures of accountability and its place in the wider Christian landscape.
“This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is one of the dominant forms of Protestantism in the United States.”
That problem is no longer marginal. Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study found nondenominational Protestants now make up 7% of U.S. adults, making them the second-largest Protestant family in the country after Baptists. That alone should make Christians more careful about how the category is discussed. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is one of the dominant forms of Protestantism in the United States.
Yet the category itself remains slippery.
Scott Thumma observed years ago that nondenominationalism often is defined by what it is not, and once denominational labels are removed, a congregation’s identity can become “unknown” from its sign out front. That phrase is hard to forget. It captures the experience many Christians now have. They can tell whether a church is polished, contemporary or welcoming. They often cannot tell what the church actually is until they have been inside it for some time.
That lack of candor is not harmless. It affects how Christians are formed. It also affects how authority works. One of the recurring claims made on behalf of nondenominational churches is that they are free from denominational control. Sometimes that is true in a formal sense. But it is often misleading in a practical one.
Thumma’s more recent research on nondenominational and independent churches found the dominant theological outlook in these churches is evangelical, their median founding date is 1970, and 75% are connected to loose networks, fellowships or associations such as Willow Creek, Catalyst and Acts 29.
In other words, many churches that reject denomination have not escaped larger structures of influence. They simply have traded formal structures for softer ones.
That exchange deserves more scrutiny than it usually receives. A formal denomination may be frustrating, cumbersome and deeply flawed. But at least its structures usually can be named. Its standards, councils, histories and disputes are more public. A loose network, by contrast, can exert tremendous theological and practical influence while remaining difficult for ordinary church members to identify. The rhetoric of independence can conceal the reality of dependence.
I do not deny that some nondenominational churches are serious, faithful and fruitful. Many are. Nor do I imagine that every denominational church is healthier simply because it carries an inherited name. Plenty of denominational congregations are exhausted, hollow or indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. A denominational label can preserve clarity, but it can also preserve decay.
“I remain unconvinced that the answer to bad denominationalism is ecclesial vagueness.”
Still, I remain unconvinced that the answer to bad denominationalism is ecclesial vagueness.
From where I stand, the better path is ecumenical honesty. Churches should be able to cooperate across traditions, pray across traditions and bear witness together without pretending that doctrine, polity and history no longer exist. Thomas Rausch has argued that a “new ecumenism” is emerging in global Christianity, one shaped not only by formal agreements but by shared life, common witness and a broader search for Christian unity.
That account is helpful. But even the most generous ecumenism still depends on truthfulness. Real communion is not built by hiding identity. It is built by bringing identity into conversation without turning difference into hostility.
That is why I remain cautious. I am not suspicious of every church without a denominational name. I am suspicious of the assumption that losing the name has solved the deeper problem. Quite often it has not. Quite often the theology is still there, the inherited instincts are still there, the governing structures are still there, and the culture is still there — but the average worshiper has fewer words with which to understand any of it.
Churches owe people better than that.
They should be able to say what they believe, how they are governed, where they come from and with whom they stand. They should be able to enter ecumenical life without embarrassment about memory. They should be free, yes, but not rootless; open, yes, but not opaque; welcoming, yes, but also honest.
That, at least, is why I remain cautious about nondenominationalism.
Daniel Coffey is a minister of word and sacrament affiliated with the International Council of Community Churches. Raised in Appalachia, his faith formation combined deeply rooted Baptist heritage and a passion for justice, spiritual authenticity and inclusive community. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in religion from American Public University and a master of divinity and master of arts in Christian education degrees from Union Presbyterian Seminary. He currently lives in North Carolina with his husband and three cats.