Biblical Community (Part Two)
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Last week we talked about our responsibility as Christians to unite ourselves to a local body of believers. Our growth in Jesus will be hindered if we try to be lone-ranger Christians. We need to be committed and to covenant with other like-minded believers in Jesus. And I said that this week we will look at the church’s role in this.
So this morning that’s what we will consider. What is the church’s role in your spiritual development? Or maybe to put that a little differently what is our “together” job for one another?
So you might be here as a guest, or maybe not even a member, and thinking—should I just leave at this point? What bearing does this have on my life? I’d actually argue that this is a pretty important sermon for you to hear. Today we’re going to consider what is membership, why does it matter, is it biblical, and continue making a case why membership in a local church is helpful to all of our spiritual development. Really, I want to make the argument that your commitment to a local church is vital for your own growth and for the growth of the kingdom of God. And as such a local church needs to be structured in such a way that membership matters.
I’ll also be doing things differently. Normally I’ll introduce a text. Read the text, pray, then explain the text and apply it. This one is a little different and so I’m going to pray and we’ll be engaging quite a few texts throughout.
PRAY
I. What is membership? Is it biblical?
What does it mean to be a member of a local church? And is that concept even biblical? Do you see in the New Testament someone becoming a member of a church? What does that even mean? Does it matter for you?
In order to answer those questions we need to take a couple of steps back. What is a church?
What is the church?
When Paul wrote to the church in Rome what does he mean? When Jesus told John to deliver his message to the church in Ephesus what does he mean? The clearest definition that I can come up with of a church as defined by Scripture is this: a blood-bought community of believers that have been joined together for the glory of God.
This would be more the definition of the church universal—but the church is comprised of local expressions of the universal. In other words we would be a blood-bought community of believers that have been joined together for the glory of God gathered in Neosho, Missouri (as opposed to Rome, Ephesus, or Joplin).
Note a few things with this definition.
It is a blood-bought community. This language comes from Revelation 5, where Jesus is said to be the one who “by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” This is the eternal picture of the church—but notice that the church is a blood-bought people. This means that we belong to Jesus. The church has been bought with the blood of Christ.It is a community of believers. The Greek word for church is ekklesia. This is not a word originally unique to Christians—but it has become that. Initially it meant a gathering of people for a stated purpose. In other words you could have a group of city council members that would ekklesia for the sake of discussing the plans for the city. A church—as defined in the Bible—is a gathering (community) of believers. When Paul writes to Rome he doesn’t write to everyone in the city, or even those in Corinth. Paul writes to churches and he always defines them as believers.I say “that have been joined together” because of Paul’s language. The biblical picture is that as believers are united to Christ (the head of His church) they are united to the various other parts. There is a unity within the body. But that unity is wrapped up in our unity to the head. That is why there cannot be unity for the sake of unity—but only in that we are “joined together” by the Lord. And our being joined together is for the glory of God. This I take from many places, but mostly from Ephesians 3 where Paul speaks of the “manifold wisdom of God being displayed through the church”. The church is a cosmic display of the glory of God in uniting diverse believers together.
But for now it is sufficient to note that a church is a gathering of believers. You might want to add something there about purpose—we gather for worship, building up one another in love, etc.
What is meant by regenerate church membership?
Saying that a church is a community of believers is actually making a significant statement. Because it’s saying that an unbeliever may go to church—you may be here and you aren’t sure about Jesus, maybe you’re parents make you come here, maybe you’re curious, maybe you’re just assuming you’re in a good relationship with the Lord…but you are coming to the gathering of believers. But it doesn’t make you necessarily a part of—that gathering.
We are a Baptist church. And one of the things that means is that we believe that the Bible teaches that believers should be members. I like how Nathan Finn phrases this:
“Baptists believe that New Testament churches were covenanted communities of individuals who had embraced the gospel.”
So, do you have to be a believer to be part of a church? What about children are they automatically members of the church? But think about this, If the church is a gathering of believers who have committed themselves to one another it’s a little silly to say, “well do they have to be believers in order to be believers?”
Why then do you need to commit to a local church? If you’re connected with Jesus isn’t that enough? You’re a believer. You come to church. Why do you need to do something like “join” a church? Why become a member? Is membership biblical?
Is church membership even biblical?
You will find no place in Scripture of people “joining” a church. Or do you?
Consider 1 Corinthians 5. Paul wrote the Corinthians to exclude an immoral man from among their midst. Unless there is a defined “in” you cannot boot someone “out”. This same language is used in 1 John. There are a group of people that went “out from among us”. In fact even consider the letters of Paul to the church in Rome. There has to be some sort of boundary or else it means nothing to be a church.
That boundary is belief. They may not have had membership quite the way that we do in our day—but it is quite evident that they kept lists of widows, orphans, etc. And it seems that they had a decent grasp on who was “in” and who as “out”. They knew who believed and was bearing fruits in accordance with repentance and who was not. This is really another way of saying they were keeping track and holding themselves responsible to care for “one another” (those in) and to evangelize those on the outside.
So church membership—the notion of “in” and “out”—is certainly a biblical concept. What is even clearer is what is expected of those “in” and what is the responsibility of the church (the gathering of believers) to one another.
You could also ask a question of Hebrews 13. It says to submit to your leaders and tells us shepherds that we will give an account of the flock of God among us. So if there isn’t an “in” and “out” a membership type of structure then how do you know who your shepherd is? How does your shepherd know that you are part of the flock?
II. What does it mean to be a member? Who is “in” and who is “out”?
A believer
If the church is a blood-bought community of believers then the most fundamental part of being a member would be one that is believing in Christ. Notice the wording of that. The members of Church are not those that have once followed Jesus but now are not. The members of Church are those that are currently following Jesus. Look at 1 John. Those that left, those that were no longer identifying themselves with the community were considered to be “out”.
A baptized believer
We’re not going to get side-tracked by this one much but it is somewhat important. This is another thing that will make us different than a Presbyterian or a Lutheran church. They would hold that the Bible teaches that baptism actually comes before belief. They would say that circumcision in the OT was the sign of entrance into the community of belief. In the NT they’d see that as baptism. Children were brought into the covenant community because of their parents in the OT, so why not keep that same thing in the NT? Why not baptize children?
But as Baptists we’d say that the New Testament pattern is that belief is your profession of faith—it’s what identifies you as being in union with Christ. Baptism happens AFTER belief. Baptism is your obedience to Christ. It’s for you to publicly identify with Jesus. If you’re trusting in Jesus then you need to make that public through baptism.
This is why, though, that we say in order to be a member—in order to be united to our community you need to be biblically baptized. That doesn’t mean you have to be baptized to attend our gatherings. Far from it. But it does mean that if you want to say, “I’m committed to Calvary and I want Calvary to be committed to my spiritual growth. I want to be part of THIS flock….then it means you need to follow Christ in baptism”.
Attending the gatherings
Hebrews 10:25 is clear that we are to gather together regularly. Membership is a living commitment. It is being in covenant with a group of people. To not gather together with believers would be as ridiculous as a husband thinking he is being faithful when he hasn’t been home for years but has been living with another woman. Certainly COVID has impacted the way we look at this. But it’s the same with any other health issue—someone is not in disobedience to Hebrews 10:25 if they are providentially hindered from gathering together. But if you can come—and you aren’t gathering together—then it really does call into question our commitment to one another.
It is worthy of repeating what Mark Dever has stated:
Uninvolved members confuse both real members and non-Christians about what it means to be a Christian. And active members do the voluntarily inactive members no service when they allow them to remain members of the church, since membership is the chruch’s corporate endorsement of a person’s salvation. Did you catch that? By calling someone a member of your church, you are saying that that individual has your church’s endorsement as a Christian.
That may seem a bit much—but that’s what we are doing with membership. If we believe that membership in a local body is reserved for those who are believers in Jesus then what are we saying if we say Person X is a member of the local body? We’re saying we believe by the grace of God that this person is part of the body of Christ universal and that this commitment to Christ is expressed in this local body here in Neosho, MO.
We’re endorsing you as a believer. This is connected with the other aspect of being a member.
Church discipline
Part of the benefit, yes benefit, of being part of the local church is to be protected by church discipline. Church discipline is not only referring to the final step of excommunication. Church discipline encompasses teaching, fellowship, keeping one another accountable, keeping yourself accountable, and the other stages that lead towards excommunication.
Notice, just for the sake of this discussion what happens if a church does not engage in discipline. Consider two illustrations. Proverbs 13 and 23 speaks of disciplining those we love. If we refuse discipline we refuse love. Loving, God-honoring discipline is the God-given method of taking a wayward child and bringing them back into the circle of blessing. If a church refuses to discipline then a church is refusing to care for its members.
We will summarize this by asking a question what is the difference between members and non-members?
This circle shows the bare minimum of what it means to be a member “in” our local expression of the church:
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Believing in Christ—means that those who are “in” will persevere in faith
Continuing Display of Fruits in Accordance with Repentance—means that we will live lives that are constantly shaped by the repentance and faith of the gospel. This will include such things as tithing, active membership, holiness, etc.
Baptized—does not mean that they have to have been baptized in our church but that must have been scripturally baptized (that will need to be fleshed out later).
Voluntarily Committing to our Body—This would be the way that someone that moves into our community would join. They could do this through transferring a letter from a like-minded church, if one is not available a statement of faith, and this would also make room for us requiring going through our 101, 201, and 301 classes if we desire.
All four of these must be present.
Now, let’s get practical.
Even though the church is a body, a group of people and not a static building, I want us to think for a moment of our church as a building. This is illustration is not speaking of a Sunday morning. If you are picturing it then picture a business meeting where all of the members of our church are going to gather. Let’s imagine that Jesus is coming on a Thursday night and he wants to take inventory of our church. He wants to know what the “inside” looks like.
In order to have a biblical “inside” that we would be proud for Jesus to inventory three things must happen. We must be actively guarding the front door and when necessary opening the back door. And we must be passionate about building up those on the “inside”.
In order to have a God-honoring inside we need to look at both doors as different tasks.
Front-Door (Entrance)
We have to be clear about what membership is, and we have to do this up front. It should be clear how to become a member and what it means to be a member.
We do not accept people as members flippantly. They go through membership interviews with pastors/deacons. If we see fit they go through our classes. We make every effort to ensure that the people we are identifying as believers (that we would be happy for Jesus to inventory) are truly believers. Obviously, we have no way to know their heart but the Lord calls us to be responsible. This also means that we become more intentional about offering our introductory classes).
We also become intentional about encouraging faithful attenders to commit to membership.
Back-Door (Exit)
There are two aspects of this. One will be temporary and potentially intense at first. The other will be permanent.
The first thing that must happen is a better grasp on our rolls. Our rolls should reflect regenerate church membership and that people are bearing fruits in accordance with repentance. One of the things that we will be proposing in the coming weeks is putting together a team of folks who will be tasked with helping us get our membership rolls in better order.
If we have 700 members and only 200 attending that means we have 500 people who are not caring for. We need to determine who these 500 are.
Shut-ins. These will be contacted and we will develop a better ministry to reaching our shut-ins.College students that are away. They will be on “watch care” membership. And we will attempt to assist them as well.Those that have moved. We will try to encourage them to find a church home where they are located. Those that are at a different church. These we will contact and see if they want to move their membership or be removed from ours.Those that are in the community and committed nowhere. To them we will write letters to a large number of people asking them if they have a church home, and if they want to remain members of Calvary, and explaining what that entails. Also in this letter we will state that if they do not respond by a certain date we will assume that they want to be removed from our membership roles.
We want to try to find those who have departed. Have conversations. If God still has them here at Calvary we want to work towards what that means. We want to be healthy.
So why does this matter? Why does this matter for you?
Commit to Christ….
Commit to one-another…have you been trying to be a lone-ranger? Are there others in the body you need to reconcile with?
Commit to this body.