What is the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)?

The name is genuinely ambiguous. Groups headquartered in Anderson, Indiana; Cleveland, Tennessee; Guthrie, Oklahoma and elsewhere all use it, and they are distinct bodies with different histories, structures and emphases. When people ask about the Church of God in a Wesleyan-holiness context, they usually mean Anderson.

It began in 1881

The movement grew out of the work of holiness evangelists in Indiana and Michigan in the early 1880s, most prominently Daniel Sidney Warner. Warner and those around him were not trying to start another denomination. They were reacting against what they saw as the fragmenting of Christians into competing organisations, and their message was holiness, unity and the rejection of sectarianism.

Wesleyan and Arminian roots

Theologically the movement sits in the Wesleyan-Arminian stream, with a restorationist streak alongside it. Warner and his associates were, in practice, followers of John Wesley and the early Methodists, and the holiness emphasis that shaped nineteenth century Methodism runs straight through the movement's teaching on sanctification.

No creed, and no membership roll

Two features surprise people who meet the movement for the first time. It holds no formal creed other than the Bible, on the conviction that the scriptures are the statement of belief and a further document only competes with them. And it keeps no formal membership, because it understands salvation itself, rather than a register, to be what makes someone part of the church.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called.

Ephesians 4:3 to 4

That passage is close to the centre of the movement's self-understanding, and it explains the unusual structure: an organisation that is deliberately light because a heavy one was thought to be part of the problem.

Where Solid Rock stands

Solid Rock Community Church is an independent congregation. It governs itself, calls its own pastors and holds its own property, and it is closely aligned with the Church of God movement out of Anderson rather than being a branch of it. That distinction is worth stating precisely, because alignment and membership are different things and the difference matters to anyone asking who a church answers to.

The church publishes its own statement of faith, twenty-one articles with the scripture behind each one, and that document rather than any denominational summary is the accurate answer to what Solid Rock teaches.

Reading further

Church of God Ministries in Anderson maintains the movement's own account of its beliefs and history, which is the best primary source. The church's own history in Kissimmee, which begins in April 1968, is a separate story and is told on the history page.

Read our beliefs