Matt O'Reilly, PhD

It’s a question that many regular churchgoers may never ask. Church, for a lot of us, is the default position. It’s just what you do. Why ask why. However, more and more people are finding the Church unnecessary. And a growing number are looking to places other than the Church to find spiritual fulfillment. Recent years have seen the rise of the “spiritual but not religious,” who find great importance in spirituality but don’t see traditional expressions of the Church as good

I’m grateful for the opportunity to take part in a roundtable discussion for the 9 Marks Journal on the question: are denominations worth it? The other participants are pastors from a variety of contexts and denominational backgrounds and include Tim Keller, Carl Trueman, Tom Ascol, Tim Cantrell, and Rick Phillips. You can preview the roundtable discussion here, and the full journal should be available soon. Most of us answered the question with a generally positive view of d