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If someone is on vacation in a town with which they are not familiar, or if someone moves to a new area, it is of immense help to be able to identify clearly where the various churches in the locale stand in relation to various issues. To be told “our church just holds to the Bible” might appear to be rooted in a high view of Scripture but in fact tells the outsider little about the church beyond its generic commitment to some form of biblical authority. It could be a thoroughly orthodox church or it could be an off-the-wall, snake-handling group to whom all notions of God as Trinity might be utterly alien. Unless one attends the church over a period of time, its cherished doctrinal commitments and distinctives will probably not be immediately apparent (snake handling being, I assume, an obvious exception).