This is the first in a small series of posts on church membership.<\/p>\n
I am not convinced that church “membership”, as implemented by most churches I have attended or visited through my life, is a Biblically-valid stance to take.<\/p>\n
Certainly we are not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together. And in order to be a vital part of the bride of Christ, we need to be engaged with a local manifestation of that body.<\/p>\n
But does that mean that a church can or should offer, let alone require, membership?<\/p>\n
From observing many churches, membership is a formal process whereby a given professing Christian applies to become a part of a local church. They [generally] must agree to the church\u2019s constitution and confession of faith. They [typically] must meet with the elder(s) in an interview who will probe their background, why they want to join this<\/strong> church, and then be submitted to the congregation to consider.<\/p>\n Once the consideration period is over, the new member generally reads their testimony in front of the congregation, and then is voted-upon for reception into membership by the current members.<\/p>\n Various churches have differing standards over aspects of this process: how old must the applicant be, what type of background they have, how new are they to the church, etc.<\/p>\n My question is why is there such a formal process of joining a church? Yes, I understand that if you are not a “part” of a church, church discipline doesn’t make much sense. I do not see any direct evidence that the early church practiced a “membership” process – though some of that may just be based on the relative lack of mobility amongst first-century people. Or it could be related to the likelihood that a given city or area might only have one church because they stood out so much from the surrounding society. And certainly, claiming to be a Christian in the first century AD was not something to be taken lightly.<\/p>\n We also see Paul commending certain people from one city to brethren in a different city to be accepted by their gathering if\/when they come. We see in 1 Corinthians Paul calling-on the church to put away from their midst the sinning brother. We also see in 2 Corinthians Paul now urging the church to take him back if he’s truly repented.<\/p>\n If I am a member of a church, and I decide for whatever reasons to move to a different area, or find my convictions no longer lining-up well with the church I had been attending, I believe it is my responsibility as a Christian to find a body of believers with whom I can more readily identify and cooperate with. My duty as a Christian is first to my King and His work, and secondly to the local body I work with.<\/p>\n I’m not suggesting that if you don’t get along with somebody in the congregation that that\u2019s grounds for just moving-on. Nor do I think it is a good idea to try to be engaged with more than one or two churches at a time. But I cannot see how the formal practice of membership is a healthy add-on to the Christian life.<\/p>\n It seems that the church as a whole has taken lessons from other organizations whereby you must join to be a part – such as the Elks or Freemasons. Joining the church happens when a person is converted and baptized. Once I was converted, I became a member of the universal body of Christ. My attachment to a local representation of that body took a while because the church I was in had draconian policies which had to be fulfilled before someone could be baptized and become a member. Such policies turned-off many of the people I grew-up with form wanting to join that specific church.<\/p>\n I’ve attended other churches that had completely no concept of membership or<\/em> belonging… and I can see the issues with that, too. I do believe it’s important to belong<\/em> to a church. But the concept of membership<\/em> needs to be re-examined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the first in a small series of posts on church membership. I am not convinced that church “membership”, as implemented by most churches I have attended or visited through my life, is a Biblically-valid stance to take. Certainly we are not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together. And in order to be …
Continue reading Church Membership?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[880,883],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meanderings","category-study"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}