Re-Thinking Church Membership (Parts 1-10)

. . . . . . . . (Click here for Newer Entries, Parts 11-20)

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 10)

Read entire series in one article here, or as a collection of all posts here.

Continuing on in my examination of the articles at Pulpit Magazine, here's a quote from Part 2 of their series. It is in regard to Christians committing themselves to other believers in a local assembly.

The Exhortation to Mutual Edification [biblical "one anothers"] :...Exhortations to this kind of ministry presuppose that believers have committed themselves to other believers in a specific local assembly. Church membership is simply the formal way to make that commitment.

This is interesting. Church membership (as the elders at Grace Church define it!) is the formal way to make a commitment to other believers? I have a different understanding of commitment to other believers. A commitment to other believers is included in the New Covenant of Christ's blood. One does not commit to other believers by jumping through the hoops of a man-made church membership, one commits to other believers by obeying Christ with respect to loving others. The formal way to commit one's self to others is by actually committing one's self to others. It's that simple!

Part 9 . . . . . . . . Part 11

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 9)

Read entire series in one article here, or as a collection of all posts here.

Last month, Reformed Catholicism [Update: link no longer in use] posted (long post) with the following question: Did the Apostle Paul regard all the baptized as members of Christ? (and related questions for Calvinists). [Update: link no longer in use] While, in general, the question was framed within the context of all believers regardless of denomination or tradition, I related it to "formal" church membership in the comments section. The quotes offered in the article pointed to the apostles' treatment of all baptized believers as members of the body. My application to limited "formal membership" was taken by two of the RefCath regulars as a good point of how fleshing out systematic theology can butcher biblical theology.

Part 8 . . . . . . . . Part 10

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 8)

Read entire series here.

Continuing further in my examination of Part 1 of Pulpit Magazine's article on church membership, I'll now look at a statement in their next section on the basis of church membership.

Although Scripture does not contain an explicit command to formally join a local church, the biblical foundation for church membership permeates the New Testament.

Later on in the comments section, a comment by JackW appears:

I am committed to attending and ministering in a local church to which I am not a “member.” When I’m asked about it, I reply with the question, “How am I not a member?”

This is answered by Jesse Johnson, who appears from all I can tell to be an elder at Grace Community Church:

If you were at Grace Church, the answer to your question, “how am I not a member” is this: you are refusing to follow the leadership of the elders... If you refuse to do that, my question would be, “why not follow the leadership of the elders” (Heb 13:7, 17)?

Boiling this all down, the article states that there is no command to be a "formal" member of a church. JackW isn't a formal member, so therefore hasn't sinned in not being a formal member. But Jesse then says JackW refuses to follow leadership. This would then be a sin because it violates Hebrews 13. But formal membership, not being commanded by Scripture, is required by the elders at Grace Church. So, according to Jesse, elders have the authority to add to God's word and call a violation of their commands a sin. His answer has placed elders on the same authority level as God! Elders are co-equal with God at Grace Church, even if unwittingly.

[Update Oct. 10: In all fairness, I should have worded these last two sentences differently. They should read, "His answer indicates that the elders have added requirements that God's word doesn't require. This gives themselves authority that only God has; to define sin."]

Part 7 . . . . . . . . Part 9

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 7)

Read entire series here.

Continuing in my examination of Part 1 of Pulpit Magazine's article on church membership, I'll now look at the next statement in their definition of church membership.

To become a member of a church is to formally commit oneself to an identifiable, local body of believers who have joined together for specific, divinely ordained purposes.

This statement makes it very clear that the elders of Grace Church view membership as an act to be performed by each individual believer. Yet the very proof text that they use, 1 Cor. 12:13, states something quite contrary:

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Scripture makes it very clear that entering the body comes through baptism by the Holy Spirit. It does not say, "We all baptized ourselves into one body." Baptism happens to us. Entering the body of Christ is a passive event for the Christian, not an active one. As I will show in future posts, if one's definition of something is contrary to the proof text that supposedly proves it, all conclusions based on that definition are subject to being skewed. Because the Grace Church view is based on action of man rather than passive acting upon by the Spirit, I call their view a man-made formal membership.

Part 6 . . . . . . . . Part 8

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 6)

Read entire series here.

Now I'd like to examine some of the arguments put forth by Pulpit Magazine in their two part series on church membership. In my experience, their arguments are fairly representative of those who hold to a doctrine of man-made formal membership. In part 1, their definition of church membership (taken from the Grace Community Church Elders' Distinctives on Church Membership) is the following:

The Definition of Church Membership - When an individual is saved, he becomes a member of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). Because he is united to Christ and the other members of the body in this way, he is therefore qualified to become member of a local expression of that body.

What is immediately obvious about this statement is that there are two distinct levels of Christianity for the elders at Grace Church. The first level is salvation and membership in Christ's body, the second is qualification to become a member of Christ's local body based on the first. So not only are there two levels of Christianity, and two different memberships, but there are two distinct bodies of Christ. The body of Christ a person is saved into is different from the local body of Christ. It's truly amazing, but each time I've pointed this out in a discussion with a proponent of formal membership, they have denied that this idea creates two levels of Christianity! But it's right there in their definition!

What is more interesting is that the verse used, 1 Cor. 12:13, states that we have been baptized into one body, not two! Now for a question about their definition: where does the bible state that salvation qualifies a person to become a member of a local church? I'm not aware of any such passage.

Part 5 . . . . . . . . Part 7

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 5)

Read entire series here.

Society VS leaves a very good observation in the comment section of Part 4. To quote:

I like the route you are taking with this - and I agree in general with it - but at the core of the 'assembling' is an even deeper issue - usefulness of the church.

My brother told me something that opened my eyes 'churches are culture associations/clubs' more than they are churches/faith systems. I think I agree with what he said. Maybe the churches have lost their focus - and in the process - people have left church (seeing it's utter lack of use - or original intent). I think there is more to leaving church than we might think...I could be off - but it makes logical sense.

In both my personal experience and in talking with many other Christians, many people leave a church because of the formal memberships those churches have set up. (Several I've talked to have vowed to never become "formal" members of a church again.) People are welcome in many churches not because they merely confess Christ, but because they also believe not only in the essentials of Christianity, but the narrow sectarian beliefs of the leadership, and even the culture that church develops because of those narrow beliefs. Those who don't aren't welcome, and often are denied "formal" membership. Many others are turned off by the two tiered class system that "formal" membership necessarily, although not wittingly, sets up. (I will show this point in future posts.)

By requiring conformance to narrow sectarian beliefs and manufactured cultural "norms" as a part of membership, many churches are actually creating the drifting, non-participating "pew-sitters" that their "formal" memberships are designed to prevent.

Part 4 . . . . . . . . Part 6

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 4)

Read entire series here.

In Part 3 I left an open-ended question. If every Christian is already a member of the church, and if a Christian becoming a member of a church is foreign to the bible, how then is this membership a reality? The answer lies in the meaning of church itself. (See my What Is The Church? post). Unfortunately, in Western culture and the English speaking world, the word church is too often associated with a building, an institutional idea, a denomination made up of a collection of churches, or even Christianity itself.

Church, which is ekklesia in the Greek, means assembly. God's assembly. We as God's people assemble. We assemble together. When this view of church is seen, it is then easy to see how membership is a reality. We are members by assembling. There is no category in the bible of non-member, but there is one of non-assembler. We see this in Hebrews 10:24-25:

"...and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near."

The one who is a non-member is the one who forsakes the assembling together. The member does what is by nature for a member of an assembly; he assembles. I still have much to write in the development of this concept, and might just post several dozen parts to this series.

Part 3 . . . . . . . . Part 5

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 3)

Read entire series here.

Proponents of a formal man-made church membership system often point out that the idea of a Christian not being a member of a church is foreign to the New Testament. They are correct. But where they err is when they then charge "non-members" with sin or failure to obey their pastors simply because they haven't become "formal" members (according to their church's understanding of membership) of their church. If the very idea of non-membership doesn't have biblical warrant, then why do these people invent the category of "non-member" and apply it to people that the bible doesn't even apply it to?

Now for something very important to my entire series on church membership. The reason that there is no biblical category for non-member? It's because every Christian is already a member of the church. A look at every passage in the New Testament dealing with the idea of members (see part 1) uses the word in a tense that shows that we are all already members. The idea of a Christian becoming a member of the church is just as foreign to the bible as being a non-member.

Part 2 . . . . . . . . Part 4

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 2)

Read entire series here and Part 1 here.

It just so happens that after my decision to start this series that Pulpit Magazine (a ministry of Shepherd's Fellowship, with John MacArthur and other pastors at Grace Community Church) decided to run a two part series on church membership. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. I have commented in each section at least once, and I think the content of both their original posts as well as the comments sections will provide a wealth of topic matter as I discuss church membership.

Part 1 . . . . . . . . Part 3

Re-Thinking Church Membership (Part 1)

What is church membership? This question needs to be answered before one can deal with how to deal with Christians as members of churches. An even more basic question is what is the church. (I have given my answer in the earlier posts of "What is Israel?", "What is the Church?" and "Israel vs. the Church")

There are only two passages in the New Testament that directly deal with membership in the body of Christ (i.e. the church). These are found in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. Other, indirect dealings with membership occur in Ephesians 3-5 and 1 Corinthians 6.

My goal in this series is to show what the bible has to say about membership and compare it to what men have to say about it. Most Christians have not studied out the bible on this and have simply believed what their churches have taught them.

Part 2 .