Is church membership in the Bible? Is it important? What are the benefits of church membership? Pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis answer all these questions and more in the latest With All Wisdom podcast.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I am here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary. And today we want to talk about church membership. Is it biblical? Is it important? But before we get to our topic, I want to point your attention to WithAllWisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of resources that are all aimed at helping you grow in your walk with Christ. The Bible commands us to grow, commands Christians to grow. Peter says at the end of his second epistle, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are commanded to grow because growth is an evidence of life. If there’s no spiritual growth in us, then we can’t be confident that there’s spiritual life in us. So all of our resources are aimed at helping you grow and mature in the faith. That’s what we aim at with all that we write and all the podcasts that we do. We want you to grow in your relationship with the Lord, grow in maturity, grow in bearing the fruits of the Spirit. And so that is our goal, and hopefully you have benefited from our resources. We pray that you have. We recently started a new category of articles called devotionals at WithAllWisdom.org. These articles are usually shorter. They begin with some Bible verses that you can read in correspondence to the devotional, then a discussion question at the end of the article so you can talk about what you are learning with your family or with your friends. So we encourage you to check those out. Now on to our topic. The topic of church membership is another one of those topics that is subject to a myriad of opinions among Christians. Some say church membership is in the Bible, some say it isn’t. Some say church membership is vital to your spiritual life, others say it’s not. Some churches have a three- to four-step process to becoming a member, other churches have a very simple process. Other churches that have membership, or I should say among the churches that have membership, are differences of opinion about whether you should have members sign a membership covenant and what that covenant should entail and include. So in this episode, we want to hopefully bring some clarity to this topic. We believe it is an important topic, not only because of what Scripture teaches about it, but also because of the tremendous benefits that come with church membership and the potential hazards that can attend a neglect of church membership. So Cliff, knowing that there are churches out there that have membership and churches that do not have membership, why is it, do you think, that some churches and some Christians resist the idea of church membership?
Cliff: Yes, there are churches out there who resist church membership. There are churches and even denominations that are well-known that don’t have a formal membership at all. And they even actually put that in writing, that’s part of their philosophy of ministry. I’m thinking of Calvary Chapel, one of the largest evangelical denominations in the world, and they don’t have membership. There’s another local church that was influential in our area here in Cupertino, hasn’t had membership for years, and they’re deliberate as to why. And they give various reasons, or we’ll meet people who come to our church, they kind of like our church, they visit for weeks and months, and we have membership at our church. And we’ll have occasional conversations with some of these folks that won’t join our church and they have different reasons why. So we see this resistance to membership on a lot of different levels. For you and I, you know, at our church, Derek, step number one of becoming a member of our church is actually meeting with me and you, because we’re elders having that conversation. We’ll talk about how to become a member at our church. So membership is something that you and I are dealing with pretty regularly as a pastoral issue in the local church regarding why Christians, and these are real, bona fide born-again Christians, some who don’t believe in membership, here, of all the reasons over the years, the last 15 years, I just distilled them down to three main reasons that I keep hearing. Probably one of the main answers people give is, I don’t want to become a member or you shouldn’t have membership at your church because it’s not in the Bible. So I hear that frequently. And then we just have that conversation. I’m going to share a little later of why I think it is in the Bible or why our church thinks so. Another common reason, and this might be Calvary Chapel’s history as to why they don’t have a formal membership, is this formalized, organized membership. In some people’s mind, it undermines spirituality. It’s too formal. It’s like man-made. It’s squelching the spirit. If you’re a Christian, you’re a part of God’s church anyway. I entered the Church of God through salvation. I don’t need to enter through your man-made requirements and stipulations. So they think local church membership is unspiritual. And then a third reason, and I’ve had a few people even be honest about this, at the prospect of becoming a member, they fear accountability. They fear commitment. They want to just live their schedule and be footloose and fancy-free and show up whenever they want to. And they don’t like that accountability from leadership. And I’ve had some people be honest with me over the years about that. There was a brother in the Lord who was coming to our church. He liked our church. And we got to a point where we started talking about membership, and he was just totally honest with me. He said, well, you know, Cliff, you know, I like this other church because they don’t have membership, and you guys have membership. And that was the difference for him. And I said, well, what’s wrong with membership? And he said, well, to be honest with you, I don’t like the accountability. I appreciated his candor. He was totally honest. I just don’t want to be tied down, and I like my freedom, and I don’t want the accountability. So and like I said, he was a believer, but that was just kind of a breath of fresh air, even though it was a terrible attitude, but his honesty was just, thank you. I wish more people were that honest. So fear of accountability. So those are just kind of some of the top three, I think, of why Christians would say they don’t believe in membership.
Derek: Well, in light of that, why do we have membership at CBC?
Cliff: Well, real simple is we believe that membership provides a method or a mechanism or whatever you want to call it, even a tool to fulfill biblical imperatives or commands. You got all these commands in the Bible toward the church in general, but specifically commands given to pastors, elders, and shepherds who are responsible for the leadership at the church. And in order to fulfill these, membership is a mechanism that helps us do that in a very practical, tangible, and even measured in a way that we can even monitor and objectively get a handle of, so that we can assess, and are we doing our job as shepherds? So we use membership as a mechanism to fulfill biblical mandates. Here are some of the basic biblical mandates that I think having a process of membership that helps you and I as pastors. We have five elders currently, and we find the tool of membership helps us with these commands. 1 Peter 5, Peter writes there, to the elders, basically, of the church, and then he gives a main imperative, and the main imperative is you need to shepherd the flock of God. You need to be a pastor, and you need to take care and shepherd the people. Well, who, Peter? Well, you need to shepherd the flock of God among you. The ones entrusted to your care, those allotted to your care, and in the Greek text it’s literally the finite number of people that God has entrusted to you specifically. The ones among you, in other words, in your proximity, in your family. There’s a very specific number of sheep you have in your flock. God has given you 72 sheep, you better take care of all 72, you better know their name. If one strays, you need to go after him. So 1 Peter 5, so I take that seriously, and then a couple verses later it says the Lord Jesus Christ, the chief shepherd, is going to hold us accountable and judge us as shepherds of how well we took care of his sheep. So that’s a frightening prospect, and we want to do the best job that we can, and we don’t want to lose any of our sheep, we don’t want to neglect our sheep, we don’t want them falling through the cracks, and so that prompts us as elders, well, if we’re responsible for this finite number of sheep God’s entrusted to our care, I want to know who they are. I want to know their names, and I want to identify them. So membership is a way to actually just identify your sheep, very objectively, and it’s very helpful. So that’s the command, the main command to shepherds. Then on the flip side, there’s a command to the people in our church, or just Christians in general, and that’s Hebrews 13:17, and the command there in Hebrews 13:17 is, it says to every Christian, is obey your leaders. Actually obey and listen to your leaders, or literally listen to and submit to your leaders, which means listen to them and then do what they say, and then that key phrase there is your leaders, and in the membership process, step one, I’ll ask anybody that’s inquiring about membership, I’ll ask them in this verse, who do you think the leaders are? And inevitably they’ll say, oh, it’s probably the church leaders. I said, no, that’s correct. And who’s this command given to? Christians. And the command is, you need to listen to and submit to your leaders, and if it’s leaders, that’s the church leaders, so you’re accountable to your church leaders, and if you’re accountable to your church leaders who watch over your soul, the verse goes on to say, they’re accountable for your soul, then you need to know who your leaders are. If you’re going to listen to your leaders and submit to your leaders and do what they do, you probably should know who your leaders are. So my follow-up question to them always is, who do you tell people your pastor is when you’re out and around? If they go to our church, all of a sudden, yeah, I tell them that Pastor Cliff is my pastor, and if they’re not a member of our church, I let them know that, oh, that’s surprising, because I didn’t know I was your pastor. It’s news to me. Really? Well, I go to this church, yeah, but you’re not a member. So how have we formalized that relationship? You have an expectation that’s different than mine. You’re calling me your pastor, and I didn’t even know you were one of my sheep. But Hebrews 13:17 is clear. You need to know who your leaders are, identify them, listen to them, and obey them. Why? Because they watch over your soul. And this is a reciprocal relationship. It’s a mutual relationship between sheep and shepherd, and you have a common understanding, and it’s based on biblical truth, that you’re going to follow my lead. You’re going to be a part of our church family, and I’m going to watch over your soul. And we do this together. And we have agreed to this relationship. So those are really the two main verses that membership is a mechanism that fulfills those basic commands. But in addition to that, membership can help us fulfill the church discipline mandate. It’s hard to discipline people who aren’t members of your church. It just, the process has no teeth.
Derek: There’s no real consequence that you can deliver if someone’s not a member. Membership is what you use in order to bring that person to repentance, threatening that they may be put out of membership.
Cliff: The command for all saints to be serving in the church, if you’re not a part of a local church, you can’t fulfill all the one another’s. Galatians 6:6 says that whoever’s feeding you the word, you need to be giving to them and supporting them financially. So you’ve got to know who your pastors and leaders are, and that’s in a local context. And if you’re not a member of a church and identify with the church, you can’t even really fulfill that command. So that’s why we have membership, is to fulfill basic biblical commands.
Derek: Yeah, and one of the things that we tell potential members at our church with relation to our responses, elders to them, is that you’re not only making a commitment to this local body, but now that you’re becoming a member, we are giving ourselves to you as your pastors. We are taking an active interest and role in your life. We are here to serve you and to help you grow. And it’s a neat thing to see that reciprocal relationship and commitment.
Cliff: Absolutely.
Derek: With that in mind, Cliff, what is membership? How would you define it?
Cliff: Well, membership at our church is the formal process of identifying with this local fellowship. This is going to be your church family. And it’s not a cumbersome process, but here’s what we require. Here’s how you become a member at our church, is you have to be a Christian and know the gospel. So I would say we have a saved membership or a redeemed and born again membership. So you have to know the gospel and you have to be able to articulate the gospel. So you sit down, you know, that’s how step number one of the membership process for us is for you and I is we’ll have somebody that’s interested in membership, they just got to give their testimony. How do they get saved? When did they come to know Christ? And what is the gospel? Can they articulate the gospel in two sentences or less? And then we require biblical baptism, which we recently talked about. So it’s by immersion after you get saved in obedience to Jesus Christ. So we won’t let a person become a member unless they’ve been baptized in a biblical manner. And then the last one is they have to be willing to acknowledge the leadership of this church, our elders, and just follow their lead. That doesn’t mean agree with everything we say, but be submissive and teachable to the leaders that God has put in place here as we all seek to follow the Bible scripture. So the scripture is the authority over our church and we ask all of our members to be submissive to the scriptures and there’s delegated authority to the leaders of this church, the elders and pastors, and we just ask that they would be willing to listen to and submit to as Hebrews 13:17 says, as we watch over and take care of their souls. So they have to agree to that. They’re joining the family. They have to preserve the unity, fulfill basic biblical requirements, and follow the lead of the shepherds. That’s it. So it’s pretty simple actually on paper. Be a Christian, know the gospel, get baptized in biblical manner, and be willing to follow the leadership of the church.
Derek: Yeah. That’s excellent. Why don’t we now delve a little more deeply into a theology of membership, and this will also answer even more comprehensively why it’s important and then segue into the benefits of membership. But why don’t we start talking about a theology of membership?
Cliff: Yeah. I hinted at it earlier, and this is very important because one of the distinctives at our church is anything we do with respect to ministry has to flow from biblical truth and a biblical mandate. In other words, we shouldn’t be doing anything at church that is not an imperative or that Christ hasn’t required us to do. It’s His church. So that means there has to be biblical doctrine and theology as the basis of everything that we do at the church. And so I would say that’s even true of membership. And so our theology, I mean, there’s a lot of verses that we could look to in Scripture. I think I mentioned 1 Peter 5, the command of shepherds. You’ve got to know your sheep, and the ones allotted to your care. So that’s foundational. And then you’re going to be held accountable by Jesus, the chief shepherd. And then Hebrews 13:17, that’s a theological statement for our people that they need to be willing to identify their leaders formally, listen to them, obey them, preserve the unity of the body and follow their lead. And then in addition to that, I think it’s important to understand the broader picture of the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts and the epistles, where there is a theology of membership or principles of membership. Maybe the word become a member isn’t actually a statement in the Bible, but there are principles that undergird that and teach that, like be committed, serve in your local church body. I think of those Christians who think that a formal membership is too manmade, it’s too artificial, it undermines spirituality. I think they create a false dichotomy by pitting spirituality against things which are physical, or things which are spiritual versus us trying to organize stuff, as though being organized is unspiritual, or being organized is legalistic, and they confuse those two. You can be overly organized and be legalistic, but being spiritual and being organized are not mutually exclusive. So we look at the book of Acts and we see they were very spiritual, they’re being led by the Spirit, God’s doing amazing and great things, and at the same time, the apostles are organizing the church and the ministry as they go, every step of the way. So they were organized. There was a formality to the spiritual things they were doing. They established institutions or patterns of behavior, this formality of the church step of the way from at the very beginning where Peter preaches that first sermon, and there’s just a multitude of people, they listen to the preaching of the gospel, they’re convicted, they’re pierced to the heart, and then they say, what must we do? And then Peter says, repent and be saved, and on that day, it says 3,000 of them responded to the gospel message and got baptized, and then it says in Acts 2:41, that day, 3,000 were added to the church, 3,000 were added, which means somebody was counting heads, which is organization.
Derek: Keeping track of those souls that have now entered the church.
Cliff: Little later, Acts 4:4 kept preaching and it says, and that day, there were more that believed got baptized, and the number of men, the males that day, that were added was 5,000. So you see that through Acts, people, somebody’s taking notation, they’re keeping records, this is organization, they’re identifying those who believe, those who are a part, they’re a part of the family. So they’re making this separation and distinction between those who aren’t in the church and those who are, those who are a part of the family of God. This is formalizing a corporate identity of the body of Christ, which you can call membership. So you see this organization all throughout the book of Acts as the church keeps growing every time. So they got a bunch of widows coming to the church that got saved, and now they’ve got to organize around it and decide how are we going to minister to these widows so they’re not neglected. Then the church keeps growing and people are giving money to the church and the apostles. We’ve got to organize a way formally to collect this money and distribute this money. So they’re formalizing principles. And then the apostle Paul formalizes a way to recognize elders with qualifications. Peter even gives a job description of what an elder is in writing. So this constant formalizing and putting structure around what God is doing. And then Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14 that God is a God of order. So there needs to be order in the church. Even in the corporate worship assembly in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul literally lays down rules from God of protocol in the worship service. This is formality. This is organization. In Acts chapter 2 kind of gives a liturgy, if you will, of what constitutes the priorities of the saints when they gather together. So those are just example after example of formalization, organization, and structure around the things God’s doing in the church. So organization is not synonymous necessarily with being worldly or man-made tradition or legalism.
Derek: Yeah, it is a very unhelpful dichotomy. I think it actually, it doesn’t, done rightly, organization doesn’t inhibit spirituality. It actually promotes it. And so based on all the things that you just said, I think another helpful thing with regard to a theology of membership is just considering the nature of the church and how the New Testament talks about the church. So out of the over the hundred times that the word church is used in the New Testament, predominantly, I think well over 70% has unambiguous references to a local church. So it’s not just the universal church or all Christians, but specific local churches. And so you could say that the local church is so central to the New Testament idea of church. It is central to the New Testament idea of church. And when that’s the case, you have the focuses on the local church, well then that gives you an excellent reason for why you would want to have church membership so that you can know to what local church you belong and where you’re serving and the leaders you’re accountable to.
Cliff: Absolutely. That’s an excellent point. And so through this whole process, you and I just as shepherds, we have benefited from our mechanism of membership. And just one quick other comment I was going to say about putting a structure around what God is doing, organizing what God is doing. That’s the pattern in the book of Acts. If God’s doing something, then we got to organize around that to bring order to it. And we don’t want to do the opposite. And that’s to create an artificial structure and then try to force the ministry into it, Churches do all the time. That’s called programmatic ministry. Here’s our little template of what we want to do and let’s force God to make it happen. That’s doing it backwards. And that can lead to legalism or man-made tradition, but nothing wrong with it. But as a shepherd now, Derek, you and I here as elders, you’ve seen the benefit of having a membership. What are some benefits maybe that come to your mind on a practical level of being a shepherd? Here we’ve got five elders and 180 members. So what are the practical benefits you’ve seen from having a formal membership?
Derek: Interestingly, it contrasts to what you said earlier about that gentleman who said he didn’t want the accountability. Actually, that’s one of the things that I would say is a benefit of membership, is the accountability. In fact, in contrast to that gentleman is we’ve had several members and just over the course of the last few years that you and I have been meeting with the members to start the membership process, these prospective members to start the membership process, you and I could both attest that several of them say the reason they want to become a member because we’ll ask that question. Why Creekside and why membership? One of the reasons given a lot of the time, why membership? Because I want the accountability. It’s hard, but I know I need it and I know it’s going to be good for me.
Cliff: I would say that’s the number one answer we’ve been hearing in the last couple of years.
Derek: It’s been accountability.
Cliff: And I’m surprised every time I hear it. I’m pleased every time I hear it.
Derek: That’s encouraging.
Cliff: And it’s funny because sometimes I’ll remind the members, okay, now remember you said you wanted accountability. One of the sweetest answers I ever had in an interview of one of our people that was joining the church and an older dear saint lady, she’d been a part of several churches in the past. And she just found she said membership, the idea of membership was comforting to her because it made her feel safe, protected. And I think that’s true. When we know who our members are, we have a membership process for you and I as elders. We know who our sheep are. We can protect our sheep. And we’ve had to do that.
Derek: Yeah, we have. Yeah. That’s a really great answer. I love that. And I would argue that one of the great benefits is spiritual safety. You’re protected from false teaching, you’re protected from the attacks and strategies of Satan who would like to separate you from the body. You’re protected in a myriad of ways. And so I think that’s a wonderful answer.
Cliff: In this day and age, Derek, let me ask you a question. What organization or private institution on planet Earth, at least in America or California, just opens up their doors and anybody and their uncle can just waltz in unidentified off the street?
Derek: Well, I was just at an institution just before I came here and I had to show my ID and you can’t just I couldn’t just walk into the back of that room.
Cliff: Yeah. You can’t just waltz into somebody’s house or any hospital.
Derek: That’s right.
Cliff: You’ve got to show your ID. There’s some vetting and screening going on, but, oh, not at the church, man. We just open our doors and let them come in and we get weird people. We get dangerous people. So we’ve got to guard and protect our people and membership helps us do that.
Derek: Well, amen. A lot we could say a lot more we could say about church membership. We hope this has been helpful to you to just at least get you thinking about it, offer some thoughts that we hope draw you back to the scripture. That’s where we want to drive all of our wisdom and ideas and thoughts about membership. And so we just encourage you to go back to the text of scripture and search these things out. And we thank you for listening to us on this With All Wisdom episode on church membership. We encourage you again to go to with all wisdom dot org, check out our articles and other resources there. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in his word.
