More on Church Membership

~ fundyreformed

Recently I asked the question, “Is Membership in 1 Local Church Biblical?” That raised some interesting discussion in the comments.

Pulpit Magazine, a magazine-turned-blog run by Grace Community Church (John MacArthur’s church, just completed a 2 part series on “Why Membership Matters” [see part 1 & part 2]. The posts comb through the New Testament data on the Church and provide several arguments for a visible formal membership (of the roll-call variety).

I thought it would be good to follow up on my previous post by highlighting the Biblical reasons provided in Pulpit’s articles. And while I wholeheartedly agree in principle with the claim that membership does matter, I disagree that membership must be strictly formal (as if to a political body). [Along these lines, a recent post by Jeff Voegtlin highlights a Biblical evidence of a more loose form of church membership.]

Let me share the following response which I left in the comment section of the 2nd post over there.

Personally, I am not convinced by these posts. Everything said is good. Believers should submit to church leadership and should commit to the church.

I think though that we are coming at these texts with our history of American-style democratic, congregational membership. We assume there must be a written record and a tally of noses.

Over and over again, the articles say “this assumes formal membership” , or something like that. These verses and teachings could just as easily assume that everyone attending is a member. The elders are appointed and entrusted by God to oversee the flock, since when do the sheep pick their shepherds?

By requiring attenders to jump through another hoop, the hoop of formally requesting membership, we allow for a 2 tiered system of membership. The members, and the attenders. Members are shepherded and attenders are allowed to just exist. Wouldn’t it be better to just teach that everyone who attends is treated like a member, is shepherded, and is expected to contribute to the body and submit to leadership?

Another issue this discussion brings up is the whole multiple churches in one city. In Reformation days, not to mention NT days, there was usually 1 church in 1 city. The Ephesian church, while extremely large was still considered just 1 church. Today its okay for there to be 20 or 30 evangelical churches in a given city. And its also okay to ignore all the other churches except the one you are a member of. People may rub shoulders with and live next to evangelicals who attend other churches. Don’t we have a responsibility as part of Christ’s body to help those believers too?

I raise some of these questions here, and a friend who contributes to Reformation Theology, ponders this problem in this post: “Shopping for the Right Church“.

All of this is not to diminish the importance of joining an assembly. And ultimately the responsibility lies in the members to do that. But even in a family, there are varying ages of children and various stages of discernment and independence. We, the church, should allow for the weak, helping them and enfolding them into ourselves. And we should be on the look out for those struggling around us.

Blessings in Christ,

Bob Hayton

One more thing here. I don’t have all the answers and I am not beyond critique! Any thoughts from you guys? I’m all ears.

11 thoughts on “More on Church Membership”

  1. Update: Nate B. of Pulpit, gave a link to an article by Don Whitney on this issue. You can see the article here.

    I think it is good and applies to our discussion.

    I left the following as a comment in response over in the comments under the post at Pulpit. It’s awaiting moderation so I thought I’d post it here in the mean time:

    I just read Whitney’s article. It is very good, and Biblically based. Thanks for sharing that.

    Now I totally agree with everything he says under “Biblical Reasons for Joining a Church”. I can understand that a big problem today is those who float around from church to church, or those who think (like George Barna) that church is optional.

    By no means is it optional. But I can see eliminating those people by simply expanding the membership and challenging the floaters to land here. If they don’t like being treated as members, they’ll leave. Perhaps after being treated as a member for a while, they’ll start to grow and mature.

    Some of Don’s arguments assume his conclusion. Others are unfair. Obviously someone about to be kicked out can’t bring in a host of people who don’t attend the church and have them vote. Maybe formal membership is best at preventing that scenario, but I don’t think it is a must.

    Now with “join” in Acts 5:13, we still don’t have a formal membership process in view. Those who didn’t join weren’t attending and associating with them. Joining the group meant associating/attending. You can’t prove that a formal membership tier and an informal attending tier are revealed by this text.

    In 1 Cor. 14:23 “whole church” by no means implies what Whitney says. Many Biblical scholars, on the basis of Biblical and early church evidence, believe that many churches in the Bible met in a bunch of single homes. 1 Cor. 14, Acts 20, Acts 15, and other places imply the idea of all the little house churches still being considered 1 church, and at times meeting together for business. The verse in question likely refers to this scenario, and the details of the meetings in ch. 14, and the observance of the Lord’s Supper in ch. 11 would bear this out, as the details are more in line with a house-church kind of meeting/gathering.

    Finally his metaphors argument supports my point. The Spirit is building the stones together into a Temple, He is placing the gifts around in the church as He sees fit. The body is the body, even if the eye tells the hand it doesn’t need him. In light of the metaphors, when you see a bunch of attenders on the outside of membership, you think: what’s that?? The metaphor supports either veiw really. Either they really are a part of us, we’re just not recognizing them. Or they need to become a part of us.

    One other thought on this. In the examples of baptism in the NT, often the preachers/evangelizers just plain baptized the people. They didn’t wait for them to formally present themselves to the church to request it. They just did it, because they were shepherding the people. Cornelious’ household, and the Philippian jailor’s are examples of this.

    Why shouldn’t the elders just shepherd all the people. Again the sheep don’t select their elder.

    One other downside to this view is the idea that being a part of one church isn’t all that important. I can pick up and move with no big deal. I’ll just formally join the next church. If we really are the church, such moves should be more carefully thought through.

  2. It seems based on the few responses I’ve read to the other post, that there are churches out there operating by the letter of the “roll-call” style membership, while in the spirit of your point, extending opportunities to regularly attending believers to serve or contribute to the ministry. I definitely know that some are very exclusivistic about membership–one of my former pastor’s favorite cliches was, “Membership has it’s privileges,” as if the church was an American Express Card. But my current church, on the other, hand, even includes those contributing regular attenders in the instantly obsolete church directory, which is always entitled “Friends & Family of Shady Grove Baptist.”

    So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it does seem to be a bit nit-picky, but I think it’s good to raise the question to challenge those who are quick to exclude to lighten up a little.

  3. You are right, I may be hung up on something minor. That’s a good observation. But as you’ve witnessed, such things do work their way out into real live problem situations.

    Ultimately, while not the sole cause, I think this rigid understanding of membership contributes to a two-tiered commitment level being the norm. We just understand it and let it be.

    Maybe I’m off and this has no bearing on that problem. Anyways, thanks for the interaction, bro.

  4. I have not read all of Bob’s ideas about this topic.

    I like it when he links to something I’ve written because then a whole bunch of people come visit my blog and will probably see other things I’ve written. If you’ve done that, you know that me and Bob don’t see eye-to-eye most of the time.

    Anyway, my undeveloped thoughts on this issue were more in reference to certain churches that would require me to be baptized again into their membership. Somehow that seems to be adding to the example of Scripture.

    Onesimus was called “one of them” when the only time he had been among them before, he was an unconverted slave. Presumably, once he got there he was accountable to the church there. As it was Paul told them he would be there, he probably expected him to be there.

  5. By no means did I intend to imply that Pastor Voegtlin agrees with my ideas on this. I just thought his point on Col. 4 interesting, and somewhat applicable to this discussion.

  6. >”In Reformation days, not to mention NT days, there was usually 1 church in 1 city.”

    Um, no. This is a false statement. There were many churches in the days of the early Church:

    “And if you ever are visiting in cities, do not inquire simply where the house of the Lord is—for the others, sects of the impious, attempt to call their dens ‘houses of the Lord’—nor ask merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the name peculiar to this holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” (Cyril of Jerusalem)

  7. Timothy,

    I appreciate the interaction. That is my general feel, by no means am I claiming that my statement is infallible! I am open to being convinced to the contrary, for sure.

    The quote you provide, however, doesn’t seem to actually negate my claims. My claim dealt with evangelical churches. In the quote you give, the spurious “houses of the Lord” would seem to be referring to cults. And the implication is that there will just be one true church. Just one Catholic church. So it would appear he is asserting “beware of counterfeits, find the one true church in the city”.

    I do think that we could demonstrate from history that believers of years gone by did have more real unity and interactions with each other than believers often do today. I’m thinking especially of Baptists, but their are often Baptist churches on the same street where none of the members knows any of the other members. That is what I’m reacting to.

    Thanks,

    Bob

  8. Bob,
    Thanks for the link to your site from 9marks.

    I’ve not yet taken the time to read everything here concerning your discussion, but again, it seems, that in the whole Piper/Grudem/Dever/Storms/et.al. discussion on paedo-credo issues has intertwined with what church membership is. The fact that paedobaptists define a local church differently than credobaptists (or at least Baptist credobaptists) do is crucial to the discussion.

    I will quote someone much smarter than me in this:

    “A biblically directed method is a method specifically prescribed as such in the Bible; a biblically derived method is a method devised by the Christian himself in accordance with and within the framework of biblical principles in order to fulfill a biblical command to which there is attached no biblically directed method….Humanly derived ways and means are subject to us; when they are divinely given, we are subject to them. The former may be altered, abandoned in favor of others, supplemented; the latter may not. It is imposing human rules as though they carried divine authority that is strictly forbidden in Colossians 2:23.”

    We must never forget that church membership, the way that we think of it in America, is a biblically derived concept. Obviously, we are all striving to get our church rolls to be as close to the True Church Membership (The Lamb’s Book Of Life) as possible. However, we are prone to think of it as a directive rather than a derivative.

  10. Thomas,

    Can’t thank you enough for that quote! It is so applicable not only to this discussion, but much of the legalistic and other questions which fundamentalists, and ex-fundamentalists grapple with.

    Blessings from the Cross,

    Bob Hayton

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