That, my friends, is called click bait.
Membership. What do you think of when you hear that word? A gym? Costco? A rewards program? A political party?
What about church membership?
Unfortunately, a lot of us probably intuitively connect church membership with other typical forms of membership in our world. And the typical structure in those forms of membership is that you pay a certain amount of money in return for certain privileges. Pay your $50 fee, and get the privilege of parking two kilometres away from Costco, ramming your cart through the hordes of shoppers, and coming home with a lifetime supply of Shreddies, baby wipes, and vitamins when all you intended to do was buy a container of salsa.
We really are talking a lot about grocery shopping these days, aren’t we? (See Nate’s sermon from last week for more grocery humor!)
You can see how this could quickly become an unhealthy mentality to have when it comes to membership in a church. You can see how it could result in people saying “I pay your salary, so you better preach on ____!” Or, “I’ve been a member of this church for 30 years, so I should get what I want!” (These are not real examples from my experience at The Bridge Church, thankfully.) On this basis, you might even question if the idea of being a member of a church should be discarded altogether.
In preparation for our membership class next week (more on that below), I picked up a short book by Thom Rainer called “I Am A Church Member”. Here’s his diagnosis of one of the major issues plaguing the declining church in the global West: “I am suggesting that congregations across America are weak because many of us church members have lost the biblical understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ…many churches are weak because we have members who have turned the meaning of membership upside down.”
See, membership is biblical. It’s just that we’ve made the wrong connection. The similarity isn’t with Costco (don’t sue me, Costco). The similarity is with the members of a body. The analogy is not a paying member of some corporate program, but rather a healthy, functioning part of the body using its particular gifts to build up and benefit the whole (this is straight from Paul in 1 Corinthians 12). Those who reject being a member of a church are like fingers detached from the body, inching their ways along, claiming that they’re better off without being connected to the body. As they say in some parts of the world, “that dog don’t hunt”.
In 1 Corinthians 12, we also see that being part of the church is a gift. Among other things, Jesus died to wipe away our sins, reconcile us to the Father, seal us for eternal life, fill us with the Holy Spirit, and to create a new people that we can participate in. It is a gift that you don’t deserve or earn or pay for (unlike membership in the world). And as a gift from the Father, what does it say about our relationship with Him if we reject that gift?
I get it. Churches are far from perfect. And some people have been really, really, hurt by the church. I don’t want to minimize that. But I do want to encourage you to see the church the way Jesus does (Ephesians 5:25-30). Consider being a member of a church. We do need to get rid of a certain idea about church membership. The solution, however, is for it to be replaced with a more biblical one.
