Local Church Membership
A Summary
Local church membership is biblically-consistent. It helps us members obey the commands to:
“tell it [unrepentant sin] to the church” (Mt 18:17),
obey and submit to the leaders who are appointed to give an account for your soul (Heb 13:17),
submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21)
exercise judgment and discipline to those “inside the church” (1 Cor 5:12)
And it helps pastors and elders to obey the commands to:
keep watch over the flock which God has entrusted to the overseers (Acts 20:28)
“shepherd the flock of God … not domineering those in your charge” (1 Pet 5:2)
Local church membership is historically-normal. From the earliest days of the church, we have catechized, confirmed, laid-hands-on, and taught those who would join themselves to a local church body (see the Didache as an early example). After the Protestant Reformation, when the Roman Catholic church was exercising one kind of church membership, the Protestant churches did not generally dispense with membership, they similar re-formed it to their context and theological beliefs from Scripture. Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Plymouth Brethren (who call it “reception”), Wesleyans, and many denominations and flavors in between — all these have practiced local church membership in one form or another.
Local church membership is for the good of the members, not the good of the institution. Institutions are meant to serve the good of the people who make up the institution. When an institution (a church, a business, a club, an organization, etc.) gets that backward, and the members exist to serve the institution, it’s a sign of organizational disease. Thus, church membership is for the building up of the people, not of the institution. It helps the pastors care well for the souls whom God has entrusted to them, for the benefit of the people.
An Illustration
One of the best days of my last few years was during a camping trip with my family in the Pentland Hills of Scotland. We set up camp on the shores of a small loch, secured our gear, and went on a meandering “hill walk” with our kids. As we wound our way through the heather-colored hills and little crumbling-stone ruins, sheep dotted the hills and wandered across our path everywhere we turned.
In this wild-feeling environment, it was almost jarring to see that these animals, which seemed to so fit the landscape, had a shocking blaze of color painted on their backs. Some sheep were spray painted with blue or green or red blazes, with letters or various shapes. Some time later, I asked a local why the sheep are painted. He replied that, since many shepherds and farmers share large areas of pasture-land, they needed a way to identify which sheep were in their flock, so that they could care well for the flock entrusted to them.
When the Apostle Paul met with the elders of the church in Ephesus, he gave them these parting words:
“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28, ESV)
Elders and Pastors are entrusted, by God himself, with a particular flock. The elders are not over and outside the flock, but are themselves in the flock (notice the preposition, “in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers”). Yet these elders need to know which sheep belong to their flock — that is, which sheep the Holy Spirit has particularly entrusted to their long-term care. And it matters because the Over-Shepherd has purchased each of those sheep with his own precious blood, and he has entrusted them to our care.
So who, exactly, is in our care?
While church membership is not an idea that is precisely prescribed in the Bible, it is a culturally-appropriate expression of biblical realities. In this analogy, membership is like a blaze of paint on our wool to say, “I belong to this flock.” It’s not a symbol of status. It’s not a hallmark of belong to a social club. It’s simply a historically-normal and biblically-appropriate way of saying, “The Holy Spirit in his wisdom has put me in this flock, and entrusted me to the care of these under-shepherds.”
The word “Membership,” in this usage, comes not from the country club or a political party, but from the Apostle Paul’s metaphor of the “body of Christ.”
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12–20, ESV)
You do not need to become a member of a church to be a member of the body of Christ. The latter is simply the deep reality that the former is analogous to. When we become members of a local church, we are expressing to each other in a meaningful way the reality that we need each other, we are united to each other in-as-much as we are united to Christ, and that we love each other and seek to work cohesively alongside each other for the glory of Christ.
When local under-shepherds know who is in their flock, and which members belong to this local body of Christ, they can begin to appropriately plan and prioritize their care for the “sheep.” In other words, membership is less about you (the congregant) attaching yourself to me (a pastor); rather, it’s more about me being able to care well for you.
Local church membership gives us a foundation to build on, as we can formally agree together on a shared statement of faith. Local church membership gives us the ability to wisely and carefully perform church discipline, for the sake of restoration and the glory of Christ, who gave us this ministry of reconciliation and himself said that if there is a dispute over unacknowledged wrongs done, to “bring it to the church” — implying that we need to know who, precisely, the local church is — to whom we can bring our frustrations and burdens. Local church membership gives us a formal and satisfying way to say to each other, “I love you, I’m committed to you, I have fellowship with you in Christ, and I’m going to stick around to worship and serve alongside you for our good and God’s glory.” Becoming a church member is something like digging a foxhole with a brother- or sister-in-arms. We link arms together, fight the (spiritual) battle together, and when we are wounded we can call for the medic who is appointed to care for this platoon.
