I believe in church membership. I believe in membership as a practical matter that allows a church to function well. But even more so, I believe in membership as a biblical matter that allows a church to faithfully follow the Scriptures.
I suppose we ought to define our term. While acknowledging that membership can vary from church to church and context to context, the essential core is some kind of a formal agreement between the institution of a local church and the people who make up that church—an agreement that these individuals belong to that church in a way others do not. Hence, you are free to visit Grace Fellowship Church and participate in its worship services, but we will regard you a little differently than we regard the members. For example, you will not be able to conduct the business of the church and neither will you be permitted to participate in all of the church’s ministries. Some privileges and responsibilities are the exclusive domain of the members—those who are formally affiliated with the church.
With that in mind, let me offer some reasons why I believe church membership is a crucial practice for a healthy church.
Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to other Christians. The New Testament is replete with instructions on how Christians are to relate to other believers. Yet many of these commands can either only be carried out or can best be carried out in local contexts. You may be able to bear my burdens from a thousand miles away, but those who are closer are much more able. And so membership answers this question: Who are the people I am especially called to love? Or who am I primarily meant to serve with the gifts God has given me? It narrows the answer from the entire global church to one specific congregation. To become a member of a church is to say that these are the people God has most explicitly called me to love, serve, and pray for. These people are my “one another.”
Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to his spiritual leaders. Hebrews 13:17, for example, instructs Christians to “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” Are Christians to obey and submit to all Christian leaders? Or are they to obey and submit to particular Christian leaders? It makes the most sense to understand this command as local, as saying that Christians are to submit to and obey the leaders of their own local church. This means, of course, that they must be formally associated with that church.
Church membership makes sense of a pastor’s obligation to his church. All Christians are called to obey and submit while elders or pastors (words I use interchangeably) are called to keep watch—and to keep watch in such a way that they are prepared to give an account to God for the souls that have been entrusted to them. Whose souls will God demand an account of? Will every pastor be responsible for every Christian in the world? Or perhaps every Christian who walks through the doors of his church? It seems intuitive that pastors will be responsible for the souls of those who formally place themselves under their care. Church membership makes sense of all of these relationships—Christian to Christian, Christian to pastor, and pastor to Christian.
Church membership protects Christians. Christians walk a perilous path in this world and face the fierce enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Little wonder, then, that God has given Christians pastors to watch over them and guard them. Yet in most churches, pastors only consider themselves responsible for the people who formally associate themselves with that church. Christians who will not join the membership of a church fail to have God’s appointed overseers keeping watch over their souls.
Church membership guards the Lord’s Supper. Let’s set aside the matter of how a church welcomes visitors to the Lord’s Supper and focus instead on the people who regularly attend that church. We all acknowledge it is a grave matter when a church treats the Lord’s Supper flippantly and fails to keep people from “eating and drinking judgment on themselves.” Thus most churches follow some kind of a pattern in which an individual must be baptized (in baptistic churches) or make a public profession of faith (in paedobaptist churches) before they can participate in the Lord’s Supper. Typically and traditionally, that baptism or profession also begins with (or expands upon) becoming a member of the church. Participating in the Lord’s Supper is a Christian’s joy and responsibility and one that is rightly viewed as being bound to membership and protected by it.
Church membership makes sense of church discipline. Church discipline is a kind of measure of last resort that is meant to give a professed Christian one final opportunity to see the gravity of their sin and to repent of it. When carried out properly, and when an individual remains unrepentant, church discipline results in excommunication—a person being removed from the church. More specifically, the individual is removed from membership in the church. While in many cases they can and should still attend the church’s gatherings where they can hear the gospel, they can no longer do so as members and cannot take the Lord’s Supper since their lack of repentance has caused the church to doubt the genuineness of their faith. In this way, church discipline is an act of grace in which a church puts someone out so they can understand just how gravely they have sinned. Yet it is impossible to put someone out if they aren’t first in. In other words, for someone to be excommunicated they must have first been “incommunicated.” The whole process of church discipline only makes sense when it involves formally joining a church body and then being formally removed from it.
While I freely admit that the words “church membership” are not found in the pages of the Bible, I am increasingly certain that the concept is. It is there because it is an essential mark of a healthy church and a core practice of a healthy Christian.
