Church Identity
What does the Church of Christ believe? Examine common beliefs about biblical authority, baptism, church organization, the Lord's Supper, worship, salvation, and the idea of restoring or continuing New Testament Christianity.
No Single Headquarters
There is no universal headquarters governing all Churches of Christ, and there is no single creed or central denominational authority that can speak for every congregation.
That means any description has to be qualified. Congregations can differ in emphasis, interpretation, institutions they support, worship practices, and how strongly they identify with the broader Restoration Movement.
Still, several recurring convictions are historically characteristic.
Scripture
Churches of Christ commonly stress returning to Scripture rather than relying on later creeds as binding authorities.
This produces a strong interest in New Testament patterns for salvation, worship, local church organization, and teaching.
Who Changed the Church? shares the emphasis on apostolic sufficiency but sharpens it into a historical argument: the apostles completed the foundation, so later additions must be tested against what they delivered.
Baptism
Churches of Christ generally teach believer's baptism by immersion and connect baptism with forgiveness, union with Christ, and entrance into the Christian life.
Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Romans 6, and Galatians 3 are frequently central texts.
This differs from traditions that treat baptism only as a later public symbol of a salvation already complete before baptism.
Peter tells his hearers to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
Congregational Leadership
Churches of Christ typically understand elder, overseer, and shepherd language as describing the same local leadership role.
Qualified elders serve in plurality within a congregation, with deacons and other ministers serving alongside them.
That structure closely matches one of the major historical arguments in Who Changed the Church?, which contrasts plural elders in the apostolic period with the later elevation of one bishop over the presbyters.
Paul addresses the Ephesian elders and describes their work in terms of oversight and shepherding.
The Lord's Supper
Many Churches of Christ observe the Lord's Supper every first day of the week.
Acts 20:7 is commonly read as evidence that the first-century disciples gathered on the first day to break bread.
Who Changed the Church? also uses this passage and describes the El Reno prisoners independently adopting first-day communion from their reading of the New Testament.
A Cappella Worship
A cappella congregational singing is one of the practices most visibly associated with Churches of Christ.
The argument is generally that the New Testament instructs Christians to sing and does not provide an example of instrumental music in Christian congregational worship.
Not every congregation associated with the broader movement practices a cappella worship today, so it should not be treated as universally descriptive.
Restoration Language
Historically, Churches of Christ are associated with nineteenth-century restoration movements that sought to overcome denominational division by returning to New Testament Christianity.
Who Changed the Church? explicitly resists making 'Restoration Movement' the theological explanation for the church's existence.
Wood's position is that Christ's church was never lost. He argues that what is needed is not the restoration of an extinct church but continued faithfulness—or a return—to the apostolic foundation that was already complete.
Are Churches of Christ a Denomination?
Historians and religious reference works commonly classify Churches of Christ as part of the Stone-Campbell or Restoration tradition.
Many members, however, resist the word denomination because they understand the local congregation simply as a church belonging to Christ and reject denominational structures and creeds.
Those are two different kinds of claims. One describes historical association; the other describes theological self-understanding.
Why It Matters
Churches of Christ commonly emphasize Scripture, baptism by immersion, autonomous congregations, plural elders, weekly communion, and in many congregations a cappella worship. Historically they are associated with the Restoration tradition, but Who Changed the Church? makes a more specific claim: the Lord's church was never lost and therefore does not depend on a nineteenth-century movement for its existence. The book asks readers to test every church—including Churches of Christ themselves—against the apostolic foundation.