What does it mean for a church or parachurch ministry to be inclusive? The word inclusive refers to including people and avoiding excluding people.  

To be fully inclusive is impractical for conservative churches and ministries. A church cannot accept into full fellowship idolaters, sorcerers, adulterers, or anyone who is actively in rebellion against God. Nor can a conservative church or ministry accept those who believe heretical things such as denying that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, saying that the Scriptures have errors, saying that the Lord Jesus sinned, etc.  

We can be partially inclusive. That is, we can include those who agree with us on the fundamentals of the faith and exclude anyone who does not believe them.  

I experienced a push for GES to be more inclusive in 1994. Several of my board members thought that GES would reach a lot more people if we opened our membership up to people who held to mild Lordship Salvation. (At the time, GES had memberships.) I was convinced that we would lose our purpose if we became any more inclusive than we were.  

I offered my resignation. I was unwilling to remain if GES sought to include people who held to mild Lordship Salvation. The result was that those board members resigned, and GES remained exclusive on the fundamental truths of Scripture.  

The issue of assurance being of the essence of saving faith came to a head at the 2006 GES annual conference. We made it clear that we were insistent concerning the need for people to believe in the eternality of salvation in order to be born again. About half our conferees strongly disagreed and separated from GES. Most of those who left at that time joined a more inclusive parachurch organization. 

This can be a big issue in churches. If a church clearly proclaims the Free Grace message, it will lose lots of people who visit. Many churches will not name names for this very reason. They won’t warn the congregation about Lordship Salvation, Catholicism, contemplative spirituality, five-point Calvinism, etc. Even if the church is clear on the promise of everlasting life to the believer, its failure to warn people makes them susceptible to false teachings.  

Yes. We should be concerned about being too inclusive. It is possible that Alexander Hamilton coined the expression “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Whoever came up with that expression was thinking clearly. Let’s stand for something. As the song by E. M. Wadsworth says, “I am standing on the Word of God.”