Over the past six months, I’ve been on a journey to figure out what church membership means to me. Like any good Baptist, I feel a compulsion to start with the Bible, so here goes:
It’s not in there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, before you head to the comments section, yes, there are some great instructions about staying in community and encouraging one another (my favorite being Ephesians 4:1-16), but none of these explicitly talk about formal membership in a congregation in the way that we talk about it today. There are instructions for deacons, teachers, elders, and believers in general, but never members, and much of this is because church looked very different in those days. Were there different groups teaching different things in the same cities? Absolutely, but it was not the denominational separation you see today, so trying to read ancient church participation onto modern church membership is problematic. While membership isn’t spelled out, Paul outlines a helpful parallel concept in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, and Colossians 3:
We are members of one body.
Membership in a body is very different than membership in an organization. Membership in an organization is about uniformity;
membership in the body focuses on diversity with a shared cause.
Members of an organization can get by just coexisting;
members of a body must cooperate and collaborate in order to fully thrive.
An organization fights to retain its membership and preserve itself;
a body comfortably sheds and generates cells as part of its daily routine,
even healing itself when injured.
The mindsets couldn’t be more different.
Organizations are tiring. Bodies are awesome.
“Perfect,” I hear you saying, “I love the metaphor of the local church as a body!”
Well, there’s a problem with that too: Paul isn’t talking about just the local church. The authors of the New Testament could never have dreamed up a scenario like the American South (where every street corner has four different churches from four different denominations, each planting another new church out of its gymnasium). The New Testament churches were small gatherings in homes that all make up a larger Body— the universal Church. The Body isn’t just your congregation; it’s all Christians throughout the world united in faith but diverse in practice.
Well, that certainly throws a wrench into things, doesn’t it?
I hesitate to reveal this secret (since I know it creates headaches for many ministers), but you can hop from church to church without ever leaving The Church.
You can attend several churches at once and be part of The Church.
You can even just gather regularly with Christian friends and be in The Church.
The Body is bigger than our individual congregations;
belief in Christ unites us all as one Church.
The Bible says little about formal membership in the local church, but it gives substantial instruction on partnering with other believers in your community even when you disagree with each other. Belief in Christ automatically means membership in The Body. So, if it’s not an explicitly defined biblical concept, why does local church membership matter?