Churches Of Christ (non-instrumental)

Historically, the Churches of Christ have stressed observance of forms and orders of worship that adhere strictly to New Testament practices. A recent renewal movement has brought innovation and greater diversity to worship in an effort to involve the emotions and to bring about a genuine encounter with God. Churches of Christ, which are numerically strongest in the southern "Bible Belt" of the United States, grow out of the nineteenth-century American Restoration movement. A key component in the theology of this movement has been a deep conviction that the Bible is the absolute, infallible Word of God and that the New Testament provides the model for Christian worship. Thomas Campbell, one of the early fathers of the Restoration movement, popularized a slogan which became a motto for congregations in the Restoration tradition: "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where they are silent, we are silent. " This theological foundation has determined much of the form of worship in Chur…