Is Membership Biblical?

To preserve biblical church community, we need to know the members of the body of Christ who are part of Calvary.

I want to thank Pastor Tim for jumping in to our series and preaching last week when I was sick. That was really helpful. I really appreciated his insights into hope and grace through Christ. Although, I may never drink punch again. Two weeks ago, it got a little tense when I preached on elder qualifications. So, I thought we’d take a little breather, and I’d talk about membership covenants. How about that? In the church where I grew up, in my middle school and high school years, they had membership, but they didn’t have a membership process. This was a congregational style of church where people voted just like us. And to vote, you had to be a member of the church. But there was no process for becoming a member of the church. Intrigued? I was, even as a high school student, I was intrigued by that. I thought, well, what is that? And so, I asked my parents and they said that to become a member of this particular church, you just needed to be around for a little while. That’s it. If you just showed up and people noticed that you were there, eventually, they just sort of considered you a member of the church. And then you’d be allowed to vote on things like the passing of the budget or calling a new senior pastor. I was pretty young, and I didn’t know much about churches at the time, and so I didn’t think much about this at all. I just learned that, and I didn’t think about it. This was my earliest memory of anything related to church membership. And then I went off to college, and then I became a Christian. And then I transferred to a Bible college where I studied the Bible, so I could go into ministry. And it was at that point in my twenties, in my classes, talking to my friends, starting to have conversations about church membership. And I found myself with my very low view of church membership, saying things like, “you know, the Bible doesn’t actually say you have to become a member of the church”. “Church membership isn’t in the Bible.” I said that. I remember listening to sermons on the importance of church membership, and I would argue with them. I would argue against them. Hey, to be a church member, all you got to do is be around for a little while, right? That’s how it works. What’s with all the formality?

This morning, I’m going to make a case from Scripture for a very high view of covenant church membership. But before I do, I’d like to acknowledge those of you in the room who resonate with my story. I have found out over the years that my experience is not uncommon. Many of us have been discipled in churches that did not hold a high view of membership. Good churches, good churches that teach the gospel, who love Jesus, and they share the gospel, but that did not have a high view. The concept or category of membership in the church was either nonexistent, or it was so widely defined that it actually didn’t matter. And if that’s you, you may feel like the category of church membership is something akin to adding to the gospel. You might feel like a category of membership is creating an inner circle of endorsed Christians or a higher level of Christians or some kind of club mentality for elite Christians. And I want you to see and understand that that’s not the case. But I want you to know, I understand your concern because I was there once. I hope you’ll see this morning that an intentional biblical membership category is nothing like an elite status. I also want to acknowledge those of you who are in the room here this morning who may be wary of church membership, but you are coming to it from a different perspective. That wariness is coming from a different source for you. You may have been part of a church that had a strong category of church membership, and you either saw or experienced church discipline, and you either saw it in a way that wasn’t biblical, or it was biblical, and you didn’t like it. And that distinction is very important, by the way. That distinction is incredibly important. If I tell my children to eat glass, they are not going to like it, and I am a monster. But if I tell my children to eat broccoli, they are not going to like it, but I’m a good dad. Do you see the difference? See the difference there? The same is true with church discipline. Churches can do things that hurt people with their unbiblical choices. They can be unkind and ungracious. They can do the wrong thing in the wrong way, or they can do the right thing in the wrong way. And when people get hurt by these types of decisions, people can rightly turn to the church and say, “you are not being faithful to the scriptures”. Sometimes, though, people get upset and hurt when churches do precisely what the scriptures tells them to do. And when the church acts faithfully in the face of sin, sometimes people feel hurt, though what they should feel is thankful for being part of a church that won’t let God be dishonored. I bring this up now because, as I lead through the scriptures this morning and make the case for intentional biblical church membership, I know that some of you bring a whole trunk of baggage to this issue. The back end is full on this. Where you’ve got so much packed back there. And for the next 30 minutes, I’d like you just to keep the trunk closed. Just keep it closed for now. It’ll still be there. Don’t worry, you can unpack this afternoon if you want to. But just keep it closed for now.

I have one very simple proposition for you this morning. Just one simple thing I want you to walk away with this morning, and that is “to preserve biblical church community, we need to know the members of the body of Christ who are part of Calvary”. That’s it. We just need to know who the members of Calvary are. That’s my whole argument this morning. This is my elevator speech for church membership. “Preserving biblical church community”, I want you to remember that phrase throughout all of our time this morning. Remember that phrase, “preserving biblical church community”. I’m going to start by showing you that a biblical church is one that can be known and counted. And then I’m going to show you this from a positive angle, then I’m going to flip it around and I’m going to show you the same truth, from a negative angle. And then I’m going to share with you the membership covenant that we’re proposing here at Calvary. Let me start in 1 Peter 5, where we’ve been in this series quite a lot. Let me go back there again. 1 Peter 5:1, “so I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight”. I want to start by pointing out something that’s very easy to overlook because it’s not the main point of this passage, but it’s a very important point, but it’s not the main point of it.  See after what I just read there, Peter goes on to explain and give instructions, as we saw a few weeks ago, on how to shepherd and give oversight. But, when you get to the end of that, when you get to the end of those instructions to those elders, you might ask the question, who, who? Who do we shepherd like this? He’s talking to the elders. Who do they shepherd? Who are the elders responsible for? You see those two little words there? Shepherd the flock of God among you. Among you. These elders aren’t responsible to shepherd every person everywhere. They’re responsible to shepherd people in God’s flock, Christians who are among them. Meaning in the church where they are elders, in the church that they pastor, they are responsible to shepherd these folks. What Peter is saying is churches are quantifiable. You can count them. There are names and faces associated with the church that these elders would think of when they heard these instructions. They wouldn’t be lost trying to figure out for whom they are responsible. They would know this because it’s talking about the people that are among these elders.

Let me show you this. The same instruction in a different book, different writer, different leaders, different situation, same exact point. When Paul was traveling to Jerusalem, he was going down to Jerusalem for trial. He was on trial for his life, for his ministry. He was traveling back on a boat. He pulls off onto the shores of Ephesus, and the elders of Ephesus come out to him on the shore. It’s one of the saddest passages, I think in all of Scripture. It’s one of the most hopeful. But it’s also very sad because he says to them, I’m never going to see you again. I love you. We’re never going to see each other face to face again until we’re in glory together. But on this earth, I’ll never see you. He’s going to part with his friends, and he gives them these instructions. This is part of the instructions that he gives. He says, “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”. So here again you see the two characteristics of a church. It’s all the people that God has obtained with His own blood. His blood bought people, His Christian people, His church people who are, and secondly, located in a particular place where these elders would know them and have access to them so they could care for them. See these men, these elders in this church, they would hear Paul say this, and they would know exactly how to apply it because they know exactly for whom they are responsible.

If I flip this around, if I take this that we just looked at here, and I flip it around, I can say it like this. If you come to me and you say, I’m a Christian, I could ask you two questions that you should be able to answer. So, you come to me and say, Kyle, I am a Christian. I’m very excited about that. That’s wonderful. That’s great. Let me ask you these two questions. And as a follower of Jesus, you should be able to answer these two questions. The first question is who are you in Christ? You should be able to explain what Christ’s death has accomplished, and what it has done in you and accomplish for you, and what your new life in Christ is like now. So, your new identity and your new life, you should be able to explain because you’re a follower of Christ. So far, so good, right? Everybody says yes, I’ve heard that question lots of times. I’m glad to ask that question. That’s a really good question to ask. I’ll bet it doesn’t challenge most of you. But here’s the second question. Which elders of God’s church has the Holy Spirit appointed to shepherd you? It’s not as easy, is it? It’s a different kind of question. We don’t think like that because frankly, we don’t usually think very biblically about the church. We think of the church like an organization that produces religious goods and services that we may or may not participate in. But biblically, a church is a quantifiable number of people united together by the Holy Spirit. Cared for by the oversight, of the Holy Spirit appointed oversight, of God’s elders. This entire spiritual family then, this church, is then led by our chief Shepherd Jesus, by the authority of God’s Word and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that is a church. That’s what it is.

Our theology of the church in our culture, our ecclesiology is incredibly low. We have a very, very low theology of the church. We have made salvation and growth an entirely personal thing. So even the question, which elders are responsible to care for you, sounds to our ears either confusing or offensive. I don’t need anybody to spiritually care. Nobody spiritually cares for me. I don’t need anybody to care for me. Spiritually, no one is responsible for me. And yet I hope you can see that within the New Testament Church, it’s assumed that every Christian is not only part of God’s living, breathing church, but that there are elders in that church who are responsible for the care of your soul, because the Holy Spirit has given them that responsibility. Let me show you how this speaks to a process of membership. I guarantee you that when Paul spoke to these Ephesians elders about caring for the people among them, that the people of the Ephesian church didn’t attend a class and then sign a membership covenant to be part of the church. I’m 99% certain that did not happen, that they went through that process. But it’s because they didn’t need to. They didn’t need to. See in Paul’s day, no one was casually checking out the services of the First Christian Church of Ephesus. Nobody was doing that. Nobody was visiting. You didn’t hang out with the church. You didn’t move to town and then hop from church to church in Ephesus to figure out which one had the best program for your kids. You didn’t do that. There was one church, and to be part of it, you risked your life and livelihood, and you did it anyway because Jesus transformed your life. You belong to His body, and I got to be with Jesus and His people. And so, you went and you were part of it. It was easy to know the members because they suffered for Christ. And by the way, in many places in the world, that’s probably all that’s still necessary to be part of the church. In Paul’s day, there was no such thing as church-less Christians and certainly not Christian-less churches. If you were present at all within the church community, it was because you were wholeheartedly committed to following Jesus up to and including your death for Him. But here in Rochester, there are lots of reasons that someone might be here in our building or showing up to our other ministries. Our culture is very different here now when it comes to church. Some people come because they’re guests, some people come, they’re new to town, they’re just checking out our church. Some attend our other churches in town, but they come to this church for a few of our ministries because they enjoy our programs. Some people don’t know Jesus at all, but they are here and they are hearing about Jesus and they are learning about Christ and they are learning about the Christian community. Some people don’t know Jesus, but they’ve attended church all their lives and that’s just what they do. And that’s just how they live their lives. They’ve got kind of that church going background.

On average, 200 more people attend our Sunday services now than they did this date last year. I ask you. The Holy Spirit has appointed the pastors and elders of Calvary to shepherd and exercise authority over the flock of God among us. Who are they? Who are they? It can’t be every person who walks through our door. And it can’t be every Christian in Rochester. Can you imagine if it was? We’d never be able to do it. This is why to preserve biblical church community, we have a short, intentional process for people who love Jesus, to opt into a covenant relationship with Calvary, so that we can mutually say together we’re going to be the church together. And this is what it looks like in God’s Word for us to be the church together. Let me show you this from a positive angle. Earlier, we had Romans 12:3-8 read aloud. This is a great passage for understanding how the different members of the body of Christ functioned together. Let me focus here in on two verses. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” Okay. The way God has designed his people is remarkable. He has made us dependent. He’s made us dependent. No Christian is independent or self-sufficient in any sense. Now you can see immediately where the challenge is going to come for us, right? In our culture as Americans, this is going to be a huge challenge for us to understand the church correctly, for those of us who live in a way where independence and self-sufficiency are praised values. We love independence and self-sufficiency. We tend to smuggle our independence into the church, making the church into sort of an add on to my personal walk with Christ. But that’s not how the Bible describes the church at all. Scripture describes a local church as a spirit unified body in which each person serves as a member who is connected to all the other members. And all of the different members have different functions, but they’re all interdependent regardless of function, because all of those functions are necessary within the church. There’s no appendix in the body of Christ. We’ve all got a part to play. 1 Corinthians 12 goes into this in even more depth. Paul argues even deeper and gives us even broader. He says that parts can’t decide that they’re not vital to the body and different parts can’t say to one another “you’re not a part of the body”, because they’re all necessary. Every part is necessary.

Now, how does this relate to church membership? Well, I’ve talked with people over the years who make a distinction between being a part of the body of Christ and being a member of a local church. Basically, the argument goes, that when Paul talks about the body of Christ, he’s talking about a sort of spiritual body and spiritual presence of Christ in the world that doesn’t necessarily equate to the structure of a local church. It’s similar to the argument that you hear sometimes from those who claim to be spiritual but not religious. Meaning they’ve rejected what they call organized religion. Christians can do the same thing with the structure of God’s local church. They’ll say something like, I am a member of the body of Christ, but I reject any responsible tie to an organized church with its leadership and its structure. That distinction does not exist. That distinction does not exist. It’s something that we’ve made up to serve our independence. In these passages where Paul describes the body of Christ, he’s talking about the body of Christ and the members of it. He describes the interaction of the members. In fact, look closely again at verse 5. “So, we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.” We’re individually members of one another. Individually. We like that part, right? Like that part, individually? Individually, we are members of one another, not individually members of the Body of Christ, individually members connected to the other members. There’s no such thing as being a member of the body of Christ and not being connected in membership to other believers who are part of the body of Christ. Biblically, that makes no sense. Again, flipping it around, if you are not vitally connected to other members of the body of Christ in a local expression of Christ’s body, a local church, there’s good reason to think that you’re not part of the body of Christ in any salvation sense at all.  This is a medical community, right? We’re a big medical community. I ask you this, if you take a part of someone’s body out and you leave it out for a while, will it continue to live on its own? Will that just keep going? No, it won’t. In a few weeks, would you consider that missing part of the body, part of the living body you took it from? No. A church is the spirit united living expression of the body of Christ. And those of you who are part of it are vital members, not just of Christ, but of each other. Church membership is our way of intentionally identifying the biblical reality of our unity together in the body of Christ. It’s not an add on to the gospel. It’s our way of determining who is part of the body of Christ here at Calvary so that we can be members of one another in all the ways that Scripture calls us to be.

Let me show you this same truth, from a negative standpoint. Now, bear with me. I’m going to read all of 1 Corinthians 5, Chapter 5, aloud right now. So, you can turn there if you want. You can open your Bibles, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. It’s only 13 verses, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m going to read the whole thing to you here. “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not even tolerated among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people – not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolator, reviler, drunkard, or swindler – not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.'” This might seem like a strange turn in a sermon like this, and it’s certainly a difficult story to hear. But it’s right in line with our need for church membership.

One of the big problems in the Corinthian church was, there was a man who had committed a sin that was so morally heinous, even those outside of the church were like, oh, that was bad. You can’t do that. They wouldn’t have tolerated it. And yet here was the Corinthian church not doing anything about it. In fact, there were some people in the church who were even applauding it, saying this was an okay thing. And Paul says, Church, this can’t be. This can’t be. You can’t go on like this as a church. This sin is like leaven that will move through an entire lump of dough and eventually the whole lump of dough is leavened. And this sin will run through God’s church, and eventually this whole church will be compromised. Using a human body illustration, I would compare this with cancer that has to be removed from the body lest it break out and spread through the rest of the body and kill the patient. This man is part of the church. He’s a member of the church. Remember, being part of the church meant you were considered a member of the body of Christ in that church. So, this man is identifying as a member of the church, but is actually a cancer within it and has to be removed from the church for his own sake and for the sake of the health of the rest of the congregation. And so, the words are very strong here. Verse 5, “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord”. And verse 12, “is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge… purge the evil person from among you”. The goal of this is both to keep the body of Christ from becoming sick with sin. But as you can see in verse 5, also to save the man, to save this man. He can see the weight of his sin and repent and turn. See Church, there is real hope and repentance and restoration for those of us who are sinners. That’s the beauty of the gospel, that if you are wracked with sin, if you need salvation, as we all do, there is hope and peace in Jesus, but only if we address sin as the heinous, God dishonoring evil that it is. These are not pleasant things to discuss, but I think you’ll agree with me that the implications here for church membership are obvious. If functioning as a healthy church requires discerning, unrepentant sin among its members, and exercising church discipline when necessary to remove people from the church so that they will see the weight of their sin and be restored, then we have to know who the members of the church are.

To preserve biblical church community, we need to identify who is part of our church. If you’re just visiting, if you’re just checking things out, you know, maybe you’re just here, you’re just checking out Christ. You’re curious. Somebody invited you. You’re not a Christian, but you’re interested in church community, or you’re just being blessed by one of our ministries here. That’s fantastic. We want you here. You are welcome to be here with us. If you don’t know Jesus, you are under the judgment of God for your sins, and we want you to know the salvation and hope and peace that we have in Jesus. That’s why we want you here. Please, please, please, please keep coming. But if you but if you’re a member of the body of Christ here at Calvary, there is a level of responsibility that we have for the care of your soul that includes doing very hard things, if necessary, because we love you. Because we love you, because we love you, and we are committed to your spiritual health. I’ll tell you this, based on what scripture says the church is, I would never want to be part of a church that wouldn’t kick me out if necessary. I would never want to be part of a church that wouldn’t kick me out if I continued in my unrepentant sin because they love me for my own soul. If I was living in unrepentant sin, and I was part of a church that didn’t care about that enough to take me aside and address that sin head on with me, you know what would happen? I would just continue on in that sin. In fact, eventually my heart would harden to the place where I excused my sin, and I could actually be living a God rejecting life all while telling myself I’m fine because the church around me tells me that I’m fine. Like a doctor who can see the tumors on the x-ray but doesn’t want to tell the patient because he knows that surgery is going to be so painful and inconvenient. Churches who do the same thing are negligent. Calvary, this is why we have church membership. It’s an intentional step of saying, we are going to be the church together in every biblical sense. Joys, pains, whatever comes, we are going to care for each other because that is what we are called to do as the body of Christ. And let me just say, those of you who like to attend church but don’t want to belong to your church would do well to really consider whether you have created a vision of what a church is in your mind apart from what God tells us His true church will be.

I want to end today by reading to you the church membership covenant that we are proposing here at Calvary. Throughout its history, Calvary has had signed agreements for its members. This covenant I’m about to read matches up with the current agreement actually very, very closely. I want you to just sit back, and I just want you to just take this in. I just want you to just listen. Listen to the way we are expressing church community as we see it in God’s Word.

“God has called His people to live in community with one another to operate as the body of Christ. To the best of our ability, we desire to foster a God-honoring, loving, and grace-filled community of believers who live out our Mission and Values. To that end, we humbly make the following commitments to each other.

As a member of Calvary Evangelical Free Church, the elders, pastors, and other leaders of the church will…

Know you. We will work hard to care for your soul, praying and caring for you and your family as we walk and serve Christ together.

Feed you. We will assure sound doctrine is preached, taught, sung, counseled and shared in every Calvary ministry for the benefit of you and your family.

Lead you. We will provide guidance and direction for you and lead our church as faithfully as we can as the Holy Spirit guides us.

Protect you. We will watch for unbiblical influences and spiritually protect our church, our families, and our members from errors in teaching.

Listen to you. We will take the time to hear from you. You will have the opportunity to take part in the voting process of the church at any business meeting.

Cultivate you. We will provide ministry opportunities and develop your leadership skills in alignment with your spiritual gifting.

As a member of Calvary Evangelical Free Church, to the best of my ability and with grace from the Lord and extended by my church family, I will…

Love, honor, and obey Jesus Christ above all else in my life in response to his life-giving grace.

Regularly participate in public worship services with the corporate body of believers at Calvary.

Be engaged in the church community by being an active member of a group overseen by the shepherding model of Calvary, both for my spiritual growth and to contribute to the spiritual growth of others.

Study the Bible and learn to apply gospel truth to my life and share it with others.

Contribute to a spirit of love, generosity, peace and unity in the Calvary community.

Approach any problem I have with someone within the church with loving, corrective, restorative action.

Be accountable to my church, allowing Calvary elders to speak into my life with loving correction and church discipline when it is necessary for my own spiritual growth and the benefit of my church family.

Use my talents and spiritual gifts and service at Calvary.

Give joyously from my income to support the Lord’s work at Calvary.

Teach and lead my family in the gospel.

Treat my occupation as my unique call to worship and witness, doing my work with excellence and sharing Christ as the Lord gives me opportunity.

Contribute to the multiplication of healthy churches as the Lord gives me opportunity.”

And then it ends with a doctrinal commitment.

“I understand that Calvary Evangelical Free Church is part of the Evangelical Free Church of America and embraces its Statement of Faith. I agree with this Statement of Faith and will not undermine it in any respect.” Would you pray with me?