Program
Doctor of Ministry
Year Approved
2017
First Advisor
Reed, Donald
Abstract
This project addresses the lack of and need for unity between evangelical churches in northern New England. It is not an area known for cooperation, being open to change, or orthodox Christianity. It is a region with typically small churches that should unify under the Gospel message, yet many of these churches have lacked the desire to cooperate in the past. This project provides a route to a more cooperative, Christ-like, and unified evangelical interchurch community. Biblical and theological sources were used to gather data for this project. This data focused on passages pertaining to church unity and disunity from the Bible, as well as the history and practice of church cooperation. The ecclesiastical history of northern New England was also briefly examined. Further, this project contains information from interviews and fields notes from three case studies at three sites in northern New England. The interviews at the New Hampshire site took place in and around the Berlin/Gorham Androscoggin River region. The interviews at the Maine site focused on the “Ossipiee/Sacopee Valley” Ossipee River area. The interviews at the Vermont site took place in the municipality of Rutland. Each site displayed diverse and interesting dynamics of interchurch unity. Cooperation, the limits thereof, history, interchurch evangelism, as well as theological opinions are all discussed at great lengths. A plan is also given for implementing interchurch cooperation in northern New England communities and elsewhere. The desire of this project is to biblically and rationally encourage those in the evangelical church to self-examine and find the necessity of interchurch cooperation. In doing so these churches should find reasonable areas of common interest and good they can participate in together. By applying and implementing the principles laid out in this project, the benefits of evangelical unity will be discovered to positively impact the Kingdom of God, the local church, and the community it serves.
Degree Name
Doctor of Ministry
Document Type
Doctoral thesis
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Wood, P. A. (2017). The Need for Interchurch Unity Among Northern New England Evangelical Churches [Doctoral thesis, Bethel University]. Spark Repository. https://spark.bethel.edu/etd/668