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Membership Has Its Privileges
Membership Has Its Privileges
I think that slogan belongs to American Express©, doesn’t it? I have been a
member of a Southern Baptist church since I was nine years-old. When I left home for
college, I transferred my membership to a Southern Baptist church in my college town.
When I became a staff member at various local churches during a 14-year ministry, the
first Sunday was always the Sunday that my family joined that church. When my
daughter left home for college, I encouraged her to find a church home and to move her
membership to that church. She has. It is a joy to attend church with her when we can.
Lately, ‘joining the church’ seems somewhat out-of-date. Families who move to
town might not ever join a church in that town, preferring to keep their membership with
their church ‘back home.’ Believers with one sort of denominational background might
not find a local church of that persuasion in a new community. So, they attend, without
joining, a local church without ever giving up their denominational identity. Some
believers have decided that local church membership is a man-made idea that they cannot
justify from Scripture. In our American society, joining is not the fashion of the latest
generations as it most certainly was of those in previous generations.
So, why should anyone ‘join’ the church? Why not keep things casual? Is there a
Biblical reasoning to church membership? Or is church membership a human invention
that needlessly attaches itself to the issue of church?
1. Wayne A. Mack and David Swaverly, Life in the Father’s House: A Member’s Guide to the
Local Church (Phillipsburg, NF: P&R Publishing, 1996) 21-22. Quoting Charles Spurgeon,
Spurgeon at His Best, comp. Tom Carter (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 33-34.
2. Another deduction from this verse is the presence of small groups. Churches did not have
buildings at this point. Thus Paul’s wording is illustrative: “if the whole church comes together.”
The expanded idea is: If the church finds a large building and calls the whole church together to
meet then discuss the matter of the immoral man and put him away from your church. Perhaps we
can even infer the first business meeting?
3. “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” Words by James M. Black. Public domain.
Sources consulted:
Donald S. Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church, published by Moody Press; 1996
Ben Patterson’s “Why Join a Church” article in Leadership Journal, 1984.
H. Leon McBeth’s The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, published by
Broadman Press; 1987