Vintage Faith: Reclaiming the Fundamental of Christian Doctrines

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Dr. Cory Marsh

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/31/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, welcome friends to another edition of Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell. And today I want to look at being biblically and theologically rooted. Now, I just said that word, theological. You’re getting nervous. Before you turn on the news or look for your favorite top 40 radio program, hear me out. One of the key marks of the New Testament Church and New Testament believers is that we are properly established in the faith. What that means is they were fully aware of what they believed and how it was to shape and guide their lives. In Acts chapter two, when describing the newly formed church, Luke said right out of the get- go that they were devoted to the apostles teaching. The early church understood that the power of having their faith anchored in the truth and knowing what they believed was essential.

Now, interesting enough, if you trade church history, when the church has struggled or began to spin into all kinds of trouble, it consistently was due to abandoning, twisting, or substituting one of its core beliefs. It is these core beliefs that are known as the fundamentals of faith. That is what I want to focus our attention on and consider how to rediscover and reclaim these great fundamental truths. Our guest today is a return friend of our program, Dr. Cory Marsh. He’s the professor of New Testament at Southern California Seminary. And he’s pastor scholar at Revolve Bible Church. Pastor Ryan Day, who’s the pastor there, has been on our program. We just love him. And Cory is also the author of a brand new book that we’re going to talk about, Recovering a Vintage Faith, Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity. Cory, it’s always a joy to have you, my brother.

Welcome to Stand in the Gap today again.

Cory Marsh:

Well, likewise, Jamie. I appreciate the invite. I enjoyed our previous conversations and I’m looking forward to this one, so I’m happy to be here. Cory,

Jamie Mitchell:

I want to discuss your book and this whole idea of the fundamentals of the faith and why knowing and holding fast to them is so essential for the church, especially at this moment. But before we get started in that, here’s where I want to start. What are the fundamentals? And is it the same as fundamentalism? And why are you suggesting that we need to recover them or rediscover them? What has been lost and how has been lost? And help our people understand what exactly we’re talking about today.

Cory Marsh:

Sure. I think it might be helpful if we just talk about the word fundamental to start there because there is a word that gets used in a variety of ways. You can have a fundamentalist Islam, if you will, or you have a fundamentalist neo-Naziism as sometimes it’s used that way in these extreme passionate ways. But the word fundamental is not … It lacks passion. It’s a neutral word. It just simply means what is basic? What is foundational? What is rudimentary? It probably took on a theological meaning with a publication of these series of volumes called The Fundamentals. That was in the early 1900s, 1910 to 1915. There was also the start of what was called the World Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919 with William Bell Riley. So some would pinpoint perhaps the beginning of a theological fundamentalism, a Christian fundamentalism with that particular association. But the word and the way it was used even theologically and the way that we’re using it as the fundamentals of the faith really were even earlier in 1895, it was defined at the Niagara Bible Conference as the five fundamentals, which they delineated as the inerrancy of scripture, the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, his substitutionary atonement, and his physical resurrection and future bodily return.

Fundamentalism, as we know it now, like sort of in a modern context, really can be pinpointed with those fundamentalists versus modernist or liberal wars in the late teens and 1920s. Perhaps Henry Emerson Fosdick’s very influential liberal sermon in 1922. It was titled Shall the Fundamentalists Win. That really became sort of a beginning point of a term of derision for those who were just simply conservative evangelicals. At the time, evangelicalism and fundamentalism were considered one and the same. Fast forward a couple decades, perhaps it became a little more inclusive. In other words, this modern neo-evangelicalism, which some would pinpoint perhaps with the establishment of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942, maybe Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947, but it became this idea to become more academically involved and less cultural retreatism, which I would say that is a narrative that has been challenged by Madison Trimal and other scholars recently, that there wasn’t this cultural retreatism with the early fundamentalists.

It’s just their culture. Their culture in the context of their day was different than ours, but they were certainly not retreating from culture. However, there were some who did take it more of a militant way and became more culturally fundamentalist and sort of let the fundamentals of the faith fall by the wayside. So in turn, in time, I should say, that term evangelicalism, which used to be conflated with fundamentalism, became eroded. It became elastic. It became what I call in my book, this jello, this mushy, unstable middle, became this evangelicalism, which it is today where it becomes everybody’s right to define. Almost everything under the sun can be considered evangelical, but I do believe that classic vintage form can be recovered or rediscovered is the term that you use from your question, which is where I step in with my book. And I think there is this need to recover what I call the fundamentals of evangelical identity because we have people today, Jamie, now identifying as evangelical Hindus, evangelical Muslims, evangelical Catholics.

How is that even possible? Because if evangelical can mean all those things, ultimately it means nothing. So we need to recover what were those classic, vintage, biblical, fundamentals of the faith, which leads to my book. And of course there’s conversation where we’re going to get into things like the supremacy of scripture, the exclusivity of Christ, the need for partial evangelism and missions work and participating in education, and of course, consistent church fellowship, which I’m looking forward to be able to teasing these out as we move along. But if I can say just very briefly and kind of just summing it up, that recovery of what I call a vintage faith, which all I mean by that is an authentic, genuine evangelicalism, that can be recovered. And I think it should be, and it goes beyond mere self-identifying as an evangelical, and it certainly goes beyond the polls and the surveys of what makes an evangelical.

It is holding to classic biblical fundamental beliefs that result in classic evangelical fundamental behavior that proves that you really do hold to those fundamentals of the faith.

Jamie Mitchell:

Cory, this is, and I hope our audience appreciates this. This program today is so needed. I talk to so many pastors who are wandering in the theological wilderness. Friends, I hope you can see why we’re doing this program and understanding the need to get back to knowing the essential truths that make up the Christian faith. When we return, I’m just going to have a dialogue with Cory. I want him to walk us through these five fundamentals of the faith found in his book. You do not want to go anywhere. Call somebody and tell them to listen. We’ll be back in a moment. Well, thanks for staying with us. We’re looking at the fundamentals of the faith with Dr. Cory Marsh who has just authored a new book. I’m holding into my hand, recovering a vintage faith. Cory, let’s get at it. There are five fundamentals.

We want you to drill down on those from your book. I want to look at each one of them briefly, but not just to explain that particular fundamental and why it’s important to believers, but why is it either being threatened or attacked or watered down? So let’s start with the first one. The supremacy of the scriptures, what is it and has it been lost?

Cory Marsh:

The supremacy of scripture is the foundational principle of vintage evangelical identity. There’s no doubt. JC Ryel in the 19th century used the phrase in regards to evangelicalism as the absolute supremacy that assigns the holy scripture, the only rule of faith in practice, the only test of truth, the only judge of controversy. It is the leading principle that determines all other theological positions, such as the exclusivity of Jesus and the necessity of evangelism, even down to growing in our theological knowledge as well as church fellowship. While Christians instinctively appeal to a multitude of lesser authorities, reason, tradition, and experience are three popular ones, the supremacy of scripture dictates that these sub-authorities must always submit to the Bible’s ultimate authority. This supremacy is rooted in the belief that the Bible really is Theopenustons, God breathed, and is necessarily inherent and infallible. And this means scripture is of an entirely different nature ontologically than other literature.

It is divine revelation. And by this is not meant that scripture is the only authority or that truth does not exist also outside the Bible, but it is that it’s the magisterial authority by which all other ministerial sources of knowledge, for example, reason, traditions, creeds and confessions and so on, and even personal experience are normed by scripture. Now, to your question, if this supremacy has been lost, I would suggest there is a profound identity crisis in evangelicalism, and it starts with where one places scripture. Too many contemporary evangelicals have traded this biblical center for sociological, cultural, or even political affiliations. But as the historian David Bevington wrote, evangelicalism has been nothing, if not Biblicist. Instead of the Bible shaping culture, modern evangelicalism too often allows culture to dictate the direction of the church. And I think this loss, Jamie, of authority, can be evidenced in several ways.

For example, theoretical inertists. Some evangelical academics and leaders sign off on doctrinal statements for job security while lacking actual submission to scripture’s authority in their lives. Therapeutic preaching is another way we can see the loss of the supremacy of scripture at church today, where scripture supremacy is abandoned, the pulpit shifts from proclaiming the word to offering entertainment, secular therapy, or even political rants. The social gospel shift as well is another evidence of this sort of loss of the supremacy of scripture and evangelicalism. Progressive critics like Christian Kobes Dumez who authored Jesus and John Wayne and Isaac Sharp who authored the other evangelicals. They argue that evangelicalism is defined by cultural militancy or political allegiances rather than theology effectively bypassing the Bible’s primary role in defining the movement. Evangelical historian, John Hannah, has suggested that because the Christian community has focused on the private, the personal and temporal rather than transcendent truth, the church has lost its soul.

However, as my book argues, this supremacy is not permanently gone, but must be zealously recovered to restore evangelicalism’s powerful influence for the sake of the gospel. And this recover requires returning to a high view of the word of God as the final arbiter of all truth.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Cory, where I see this often is when I go and visit the church and the pastor goes to the pulpit, what should be coming out of his mouth immediately is open your Bibles. And I have yet to hear that in many, many, many churches. And so there has been a slide. Look, we got to keep moving. Here’s the second one, the exclusivity of Jesus. What does it mean and how has that been watered down?

Cory Marsh:

Well, the exclusivity of Jesus is an unquestioned identity marker for authentic or I call vintage evangelicalism. At its core, the belief centers on the evangelic.That’s where we get the word evangelicalism from. Evangel is Latin for gospel. The gospel message of Christ dying for unworthy sinners. It understands that salvation is obtained solely through repentant faith in Jesus Christ who is both fully God and truly man. This theological conviction emphasizes that Christ’s death was a substitutionary atonement, and that his resurrection marks him as the only living and present savior. Biblically, this is rooted in declarations such as John 14: six, where Jesus asserts that he is the only way to the Father. And Romans 1:16, which identifies the gospel as the unique power of God for salvation. This vintage faith rejects any notion of works righteousness or human rituals as means of obtaining eternal life. I mean, Paul told the Colossian church that Christ is their life, that they will appear with him in glory.

He told the Corinthians that if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. There is no doubt that an authentic evangelical identity means Christ and Christ alone is the only way for salvation. There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved as Peter declared in Acts chapter four. However, this fundamental has been significantly watered down, as you said in today’s contemporary context, it’s resulted in an identity crisis that I describe in the book as even jellocalism. The pursuit of Jesus has been sidelined by other pursuits, such as political allegiances and cultural activism, modern sociological definitions, such as those proposed by progressive and critical scholars. They redefine evangelicalism as a cultural and political movement rather than one defined chiefly by its theology. And consequently, people are often classified as evangelical based merely on voting patterns or race or vague religious experiences rather than a robust belief in Christ’s exclusivity.

The rise of big evil, I would even say, and a toxic Christian celebrityism, which I’ll talk about more later, has further obscured the message of the cross by prioritizing platforms, prophets, even social power without proximity to borrow the term of Christian celebritiism by Caitlin Beatty. Furthermore, progressive authors have watered down the message by advocating for an inclusive evangelicalism that embraces lifestyles and beliefs, such as LGBTQ+ advocacy, which are biblically antithetical to the tradition’s original and historic identity. However, a true vintage faith understands that Christ is the only viable, sustainable and eternal identity as salvation and hymn alone is the biblical testimony.

Jamie Mitchell:

We’ll get to the third fundamental in the next segment. I don’t want to rush this because what you’re saying is so important, but if there’s been a shift in how we view the supremacy of scripture and how we view the exclusivity of Christ, I see it a lot because people just don’t want to tell the truth. They don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. They don’t want to quote unquote alienate relationships. But the truth does that, doesn’t it? I mean, we have to speak the truth about the Bible and Jesus.

Cory Marsh:

Amen. Amen. I mean, you think of just the truth of the gospel, how offensive it really is. And I think today’s evangelicals, we kind of forget that. We’ve become too accustomed, too familiar with the good news, where it’s just sort of turned into the old news or just the news. But what makes it good is actually embedded within that is an offense. The cross of Christ is offensive in different ways. I think even just historically, we are saying that this Jewish person, this iterant Jew who never traveled outside of Israel is also the savior of mankind. And that is radically offensive to those who think, especially in our culture, that we can just pull ourselves up our bootstraps. We’re so busy with success and we can do it ourselves, but that is offensive message. So much so Paul would say that the gospel is a scandal, scandalon in the Greek to Jews and it’s a stumbling block and his foolishness to the Greek or to the Gentile because the message is remarkable.

You cannot save yourself. It takes Jesus Christ to die for the sins of the world to be saved. And that does get to the heart of an offense and it requires repentance and true faith in this message. It is a remarkable, divinely revealed message that no one could have made up because it’s simply too offensive.

Jamie Mitchell:

Cory, I think your book, the timing of it is so important because there is this rejection of God’s word and there is trying to pedal off all kinds of things that people need other than Christ. And we see this drift throughout the evangelical community. And if we would just get back to these fundamentals, what an amazing, amazing thing could happen. I mean, genuine revival in people’s lives and throughout the church. And I think it has that kind of substantial impact that could take place. And these things are really, really important. Listen, friends, the Christian fundamentals are often talked about, but over time they lose their potency. They get redefined. When we come back, we’ll keep looking at these. As Cory helps us get through, we’re going to look at three and four next, a zealous evangelism and participating in theological education. Don’t go anywhere. We’re trying to reclaim and rediscover the great fundamentals of the faith here at Stand in the Gap Today.

Well, I’m glad that you’re with us today as Dr. Cory Marsh from SoCal Seminary helps us discover a vintage faith and why we should appreciate the fundamentals of the faith. Cory, let’s pick up with number three, a zealous evangelism. I thought that we have had a great expansion of the gospel’s reach. What is this fundamental and why do we need to rediscover it?

Cory Marsh:

Well, zealous evangelism is a core fundamental of evangelical identity, and I would define it as the passionate proclamation of the gospel, which leads to the mentoring of disciples in biblical truth. It is fundamentally rooted in the biblical conviction of personal human depravity, which holds that sin has corrupted the entirety of human nature, affecting our character, our communication, and our conduct. Because the human plight is one of total helplessness, outside of God’s mercy, true evangelicals are driven by a zeal to announce the message of salvation and Christ alone. And this type of activism is characterized by spirit empowered boldness, the Greek word paracea, or freedom of speech and power, which serves as the undeniable proof that a believer has been with Jesus, as we see with Peter and John in Acts chapter four. Recovering this type of activism is essential because individual redemption serves as the primary catalyst for any meaningful cultural transformation.

And in contrast to progressive authors or even Christian nationalists who redefine evangelical priorities via sociopolitical affiliations, vintage faith argues that transformed lives are what transforms society, not merely legislation. And this follows a restorative order of people then programs. Cultural changes only as a byproduct of the new birth. For example, Zachias, his personal salvation of Luke chapter 19, led him to repay those he defrauded, which boosted his immediate economy as a secondary result. Now, while legal legislation may mute the effects of sin, only the gospel can defeat it by transforming the individual heart. Therefore, I would say personal evangelism is a hallmark of authentic evangelicalism. We compel people to believe in the gospel, which eventually leads to planting churches and other types of missions work. Authentic outreach requires a missions mandate anchored in the absolute authority and sufficiency of scripture rather than cultural accommodation or humanitarian only projects.

You mentioned, Jamie, the expansion of the gospel’s reach. Indeed, the gospel’s reach has seen a significant geographic expansion, which shouldn’t be surprising to us. Jesus said in Matthew 16 that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And obviously, without gospel proclamation, there is no church. Under the great commission, the church’s mandate is what I would describe as centrifugal to go into all the nations. And this outward focus of taking the gospel to the end of the earth represents a critical, missiological, even dispensational transition from the mission of Israel. Under the economy of law, Israel was to be a centrifugal witness. It served as a fixed beacon for nations to come to it to know Yahweh. By contrast, the church under the economy of grace, ever since Acts chapter two and the birth of the church, it expands outward from Jerusalem to the nations.

Undoubtedly, therefore, zealous evangelism is a fundamental for authentic evangelical faith.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. I love what you just said there because genuine discipleship, if we are being discipled properly, we’ll want to share what we now have. And we are not seeing that, which brings me to the fourth thing, which I think is all a part of this, is participating in theological education. You’re in a seminary and you’re teaching and equipping, but why is this a fundamental and why is it so important to the identity of evangelicals today?

Cory Marsh:

Right. Yeah. This one may surprise some of your listeners. I mean, you generally don’t hear about theological education as being a fundamental of the faith, but again, I’m not talking about what is fundamental to be saved, but rather, what are the essential characteristics to an authentic evangelical identity? In other words, what makes up true historic evangelicalism? And as I argue in the book, participating in theological education is a fundamental marker of a genuine vintage evangelical identity. If we’re truly adhering to number one, the supremacy of scripture, that the Bible is God’s will revealed to us for his glory, then we cannot help but want to grow in our knowledge of him, which implies growing in our theology. And it’s this fundamental. And the next one I would say regarding church fellowship, where our evangelical beliefs are demonstrated in evangelical behavior. While modern critics and pollsters often define evangelicalism through sociological, political, or even racial lenses, a biblically rooted identity recognizes that beliefs must lead to behavior, specifically the pursuit of knowing God through his word.

And historically, education and evangelicalism have been ideally intertwined. This is evidenced by the legacy of leaders like D.L. Moody, who despite lacking formal schooling for himself, recognized the need, beginning with his own, for evangelicals to grow in their biblical and theological knowledge. And he, of course, founded Moody Bible Institute and other evangelicals, other institutions of higher learning to ensure that all believers, including the poor and minorities, had access to rigorous biblical training. And this means we can tease out the history of Christian education through Bible institutes, through Bible colleges and conservative Protestant seminaries, which are the legacy of a vintage faith. And as I said earlier, genuine evangelicalism, genuinely evangelicalism centers on the absolute supremacy of scripture. And because all other theological positions flow from the Bible, the movement has historically been a textual community comprised of people of the book who copy, who study and distribute the word of God.

And as such, commitment to education is a direct application of believing that the scripture is authoritative and sufficient. And I think for the individual Christian, participating in theological education is important for several vital reasons. One, it’s a biblical command. Growth and knowledge is not optional. Christians are commanded in two Peter 3:18 to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s the very last thing the Apostle Peter left the world. The neglected growth is to remain in theological infancy, needing to be taught the basic principles of God’s oracles over and again. Participating in theological education also enforces our relationship with God. A Christian’s relationship with God is directly proportionate to the relationship with God’s word. So dedicating yourself to learning the scriptures is the primary means of growing in grace and understanding God’s will. Paul’s main prayer for the Philippian church is that their love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment.

So whether formal training, it’s Bible called a seminary or informal training, such as consistent study within a local church, theological education provides, I think, a wonderful accountability process that fosters humility amongst your peers and your teachers. And ultimately, the goal of theological education is to bridge the gap between the academy and the church, ensuring that Christian lies, that the Christian lives a life shapes not by tradition or changing cultural trends, but the study of scripture itself and the life of the mind, which grows them in the grace and knowledge of Christ and ultimately in their awareness, God’s presence.

Jamie Mitchell:

Cory, I have been a strong advocate. And let me tell you the statement I use that I don’t see in the context of the church. I understand you’re in the academy and I understand the important role that seminaries and Bible colleges, Bible institutes play, but even in the church where this early affection for learning should happen, there is a lack of serious, orderly, theological investigation and education in the context of the local church today. I know you’re in the academy, but I know you also have a heart and a love for the church. Why has there been this almost abandoning of serious, orderly, theological education in the context of the church? Do you have any idea for us?

Cory Marsh:

That’s an important question, Jamie, and I do appreciate it. We have to own, within evangelicalism, there have been movements, traditions within evangelicalism that have downplayed the need for formal training. This idea that it’s just me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit, and I need no one else, as if the Holy Spirit didn’t also grow and impress ideas on others throughout church history to give us scholarship and commentaries and journal articles and all the different helpful aids, Bible introductions and handbooks throughout church history. The scholarship of the church has been without bound and has influenced nations and cultures. It is remarkable if you think back even in the pure American days. The local pastor was the smartest guy in the village. He had done his homework. He knew the Greek and the Hebrew and people trusted him. And unfortunately there are some pockets within evangelicals and that downplay this need.

Local churches, I mean Ephesians 3:10: 11, right? Paul says that is through the church that the manifold wisdom of God has made known. There were no colleges or seminaries back in the New Testament days. But now we’re in a context where the local church generally does not have the resources to be able to devote to intense biblical training such as learning the Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic, learning church history and the different theological disciplines, biblical theology, systematic theology, historical theology. All of these things, worldview thinking, all of these things that a seminary or Bible college and Bible institute are able to provide and support the local church. So if the education process is doing its role and knows its role, it is always to submit to the authority of the local church and to support the local church. Never is a Christian university or college meant to be an entity in itself.

Our

Jamie Mitchell:

Role

Cory Marsh:

Is to support the local church, which is what a good seminary and Biden institute does. Well,

Jamie Mitchell:

We’re going to talk about consistent church fellowship in a moment when we get back. We’ll finish up the fifth fundamental and we’ll talk about how can we get these fundamentals back into our churches and into our lives. Don’t go anywhere. Thanks for staying with us here at Standing the Gap Today. Dr. Cory Marsh has been our guest. We so appreciate what I call a practical theological scholarship and his heart for the evangelical church. Cory, how can people get a copy of this wonderful book, Recovering of Vintage Faith? And how do they find out about you and your ministry?

Cory Marsh:

Well, thank you, Jamie. I’ve appreciated my time being with you as always. And thank you for that question. The book, Recovering of Vintage Faith: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity. It’s published by Christian Focus through their mentor imprint, which is out of Scotland. It can be obtained through all the normal channels where you get your books from any bookseller, as well as the most commonplace is Amazon. It’s available on Amazon as well. But you’ll find out bookstores and different online retailers. And yeah, for those who want to find out a little bit more about me, as has been mentioned, I teach a New Testament at Southern California Seminary. I also lead our THM program and direct our publishing artists press. You can get ahold of me through those channels. My emails there on the website, as well as I serve as scholar and residents at Revolve Bible Church and where I’m able kind of some of the ideas we’ve talked so far, bridging the church and the academy, my aim is to do that on the local level.

So always having a foot in the local church as well as the academy I think helps benefit not only myself, but also the people in the church to be able to know the current trends of what’s happening in academic scholarship for good and for bad. You can find me there at Revolve Bible Church, and of course I’m on all the social media platforms as well. I mean, who isn’t these days? But those are some basic areas where you could find me and to peel to pick up my book, The Newest One: Vintage Faith.

Jamie Mitchell:

Cory, we have been discussing the five fundamentals, the supremacy of scripture, the exclusivity of Christ, a zealous evangelism, participating in theological education. I want to get to the fifth one, a consistent local church fellowship. Church life has somewhat become an optional, even lackadaisical element of the Christian walk. How can we rediscover this? And as we finish up, I think it’s so appropriate we’re talking about the church. Give a word to pastors about how to get the fundamentals back into their church, but talk first about this last and fifth fundamental of the faith.

Cory Marsh:

Sure. I would love to. In fact, I’m probably most passionate about this one, if not the first one on supremacy of scripture. But this final one is to often reduce to a secondary component of evangelicalism, but I think it’s a primary fundamental. So much so I call it the crucial X factor of evangelical identity. To rediscover or reclaim consistent local church fellowship, as a fundamental, we must first recognize that the contemporary identity crisis within evangelicalism is largely due to collecting the importance of church life. Among other reasons I’ve listened so far, a week ecclesiology or a doctrine of the church has resulted in today’s evangelicalism, this elastic and unstable movement that has been stretched to cover political blocks and celebrity culture and all these other things while losing its doctrinal core. Reclaiming a vintage faith requires understanding that evangelical identity is not merely about private belief, but about the behavior that results in that belief.

And specifically, consistent church fellowship serves as that X factor because it is the primary venue where the supremacy of scripture is applied to daily living powered by the community of saints. Without a commitment to assembling with other believers under the authority of the word of God, there is no true evangelicalism and rediscovering this fundamental necessitates a shift in how we define the church’s nature and function. At least at the very least, church must look like a physical corporate assembly rather than a privatized or virtual experience. Now, while virtual gatherings have become the modern norm, the New Testament expects physical proximity because sanctification is meant to be lived out in community. And this fellowship is built on that specific restorative order I spoke about earlier in our conversation, people then programs. Just as Jesus encountered with Zachia is focused on individual redemption before systemic change, the church must prioritize the spiritual transformation of individuals through the gospel.

And that is what affects societal change for the glory of God. Regarding church structure and authentic fellowship should be governed by a plurality of qualified elders who are committed to the steady, faithful exposition of God’s word. And this type of polity serves as a safeguard, I would say, against the Christian celebrityism and mega pastor models that currently cripple the American church. In a truly practice plurality of elders, there’s no one man on top of his pyramid. By operating as a surrogate family, so to speak, rather than a business or political lobby, the local church provides a level of encouragement and accountability that supersedes social media platforms. And in this family environment, every member is equipped, discipled, and disciplined according to the truth of scripture. And furthermore, I would add that consistent fellowship must be characterized by sound or healthy doctrine. Historically, the apostle Paul used the term sound doctrine or sound words to describe teaching that is unspoiled and free from corruption, directly linking right belief to right behavior.

And as a result, a healthy church is one where the orthodoxy of doctrine meets the orthodoxy of community. A reality, the unbelieving world can clearly see. Jesus stated that the world would know his disciples by their mutual love for one another. In John 13:35, giving the watching world a visual hermeneutic, so to speak, to judge the validity of our faith. Local church fellowship also requires the practice of biblical accountability. Rediscovering fellowship means viewing sin as a cancer that stains the period of Christ’s body rather than celebrating aberrant lifestyles or other forms of evangelicalism. It involves bearing one another’s burdens, even calling members to repentance when needed. It also involves commitment to the ordinances of water baptism and communion. Tasks that are impossible when believers remain isolated or uncommitted to a local body. True fellowship, therefore, by necessity, includes biblical separation from those who deny the fundamentals of the faith, rather in word or indeed.

And I would say, again, consistent fellowship must look like a centrifugal community. Unlike national Israel, which served as a centripetal witness, intending to pull nations to a fixed land, the church is command to go out and make disciples of all nations, as I mentioned earlier, regarding evangelism and missions work. Fellowship is the engine of this mandate. It produces evangelists and missionaries who take the gospels outside their walls and reclaiming this fundamental involves prioritizing spiritual discipleship over entertaining worship or sociopolitical activism. Ultimately, a vintage evangelical identity is found in a community that cherishes the supremacy of scripture, loves the loss with the gospel, and commits to the holy duty of doing life together for the glory of God.

Jamie Mitchell:

Cory, it sounds like that’s the admonishment to the pastor, what you just said, that that is what their church should look like. That’s what they should get passionate about. And if they want to reclaim these fundamentals, they’re going to have to believe that that is what they’ve been called to do, to shepherd a flock like you just described. We have about 30 seconds left. Isn’t that the word to a pastor today?

Cory Marsh:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I would say to the pastors seeking to rediscover or reclaim these fundamentals for the sake of their ministry, I say this, prioritize that restorative order as people then programmed. You’ve got to begin by recentering your ministry on the five fundamentals of evangelical identity, the absolute supremacy of scripture, the exclusivity of Jesus for salvation, a zeal for evangelism, and commitment to theological education, and consistent local church fellowship. Authority does matter. If the Bible is not your magisterial authority, you will inevitably become an entertainer, a therapist, or a political ranter.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hey, thank you, Cory Marsh. You are always a joy. Friends, get a copy of that book, give it to your pastor, get back to the fundamentals. You need to anchor your faith. We’ll see you tomorrow.