"Church of Christ"

[fruitful womb]

please explain to me the purpose of "Withdrawal". Why do some members chastise non-members?

I've also seen this among the "Church of Christ" churches. Church against Church. Quite bizarre, imo.

Why the prohibitions of musical instruments during worship?

[lolar2]

Just ran across this-- there are three or four different denominations all calling themselves "Church of Christ," so that may be a source of some confusion.

[odenata]

I believe I know to which group you are referring, although I don't think they classify themselves as a denomination. My best friend growing up was Church of Christ.

(There is also the United Church of Christ, which is the Protestant denomination that was formed when the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregationalists united. Also the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and several others.)

I don't know about withdrawl, but the belief about instruments is based on two ideas. One, that the early church did not use instruments, and two, that they do not see a scriptural basis for using instruments.

The Wiki page on this church is here. There seems to be a split in the church regarding para-church organizations. Do not know if this is related to "withdrawl."

[Adele_Mommy]

"Withdrawal" is kind of like "shunning" in other denominations though maybe not quite so extreme. It is a form of discipline used to keep church members in line, but it is also supposed to keep the congregation holy, which explains why Withdrawal could be used on someone who is not or is no longer a member. Basically, if all else fails and a person appears to be irredeemable, then good upstanding members of the church should not be in fellowship with that person. This site explains.

Regarding the prohibitions of musical instuments, some denominations consider some types of music as unholy or even evil. Drums is a common example. In my opinion there is no valid scriptual basis for this belief. This blog entry provides an interesting and thoughtful perspective on religious music. Note: this is a three-part post. I have linked to the first part, but the discussion on instruments is mostly in the second part.

[Mom2E4]

I attended church of Christ most of my life (the last couple of years I have not felt comfortable with any organized religion) so maybe I can answer some questions. The wiki article odenata referenced seems to be fairly accurate as to their beliefs and teachings in general, at least by my understanding of things .

The churches are not organized into any centralized group, every congregation is supposed to be autonomous. The congregation I attended as a child did not use "disfellowship" very often- I can only think of twice in the 18 years I attended before I left for college (and never in the congregations I attended as an adult for 16 years or so). Usually it was for someone in the congregation who was "flagrantly continuing in sin" despite all attempts by the elders to show that person they they were wrong. We heard of other congregations that would use disfellowship if they had a disagreement with another congregation about interpretation of something in the Bible, or to show that they were separate from "unbelievers" and say non-members were disfellowshipped, but the elders and most of the members of my congregation believed the Bible did not mean that.

The music issue is also as odenata states- because the whole intention of the church of Christ was to be as the church was in the first century, they didn't use instruments, so we didn't either. Growing up I heard the verse "sing and make music in your heart to the LORD" as an inference that God did not want instrumental music used in worship to Him. However, there are a very small number of churches that are instrumental and still are church of Christ- since there is no central organization, there are differences with every congregation. All of the congregations I have attended were a capella churches, but none of them taught that instruments were evil or anything, just not what God wanted.