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Church Membership & Church Attendance
"So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one
members one of another." [Romans 12:5]
Introduction:
In this study we will look at common teachings about membership in the local church and church attendance and compare those views with what the Bible actually teaches.
According to the Bible, true believers are members of the entire body of Christ by the simple fact that they are saved,
that they have the Spirit of the Living God dwelling in them. There is no mention in the New Testament of believers
"joining a church". From what the Bible teaches, all we can conclude is that we are born into God's church (both the corporate and the local church) at the point of salvation, the point at which we become saved, born-again, born from above, etc. We just need to start meeting with
and fellowshipping with local believers once we become saved, as mentioned in Hebrews 10:25:
"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching."
Membership classes:
Taking membership classes and then signing some pledge of membership to a local church is an idea borrowed from the world, not from the Bible. It is based on the idea that commitment is as simple as understanding all the rules and then signing a form stating that you agree to those rules and that you intend to abide by them. However, true commitment among believers in a local congregation should be and can only be based upon relationships that are nurtured by the very way that the church (household of faith) operates when it gathers together.
Having a relationship with God
is what enables a person to have a relationship with one's brothers and sisters in
Christ:
1 John 4:20 - "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
Of course we need to conduct ourselves in our relationships in accordance
with God's word, so individually and corporately we need to be reading, studying
and applying God's word. Do we think that God is pleased with us when we gather together in His name only to ignore all of our brothers and sisters in
Christ? What makes us think that God wants this "show" that we put on each Sunday? Worshipping God in Spirit and in truth requires serious commitment to the rest of God's family. For the leadership that means a whole lot more than preaching a nice
sermon (and keeping the sheep from asking questions or getting to know each
other). It means leading by example where the rest of the flock has an opportunity
to see how the leaders live, how they interact with their family members and others in
unsanitized environments. For the rest of the congregation it means using your gifts whenever you gather together and throughout the week to build up the local body of believers. If the church you are in does not let you exercise your gifts or does not even have a way of you to find out what those gifts are, then leave
and find a place where that can happen. God commands us to use our gifts.
Its not an option and its not something just for church leaders to do:
1 Peter 4:10 - "As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to
another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."
Also, a church leader is a counterfeit or
unfaithful shepherd if he is not leading by example and truly ensuring that the
local flock is using its gifts, being discipled and making disciples. If Paul could not preach in one synagogue he moved on to another. If a church will not let you
become more than just a pew warmer, leave. You probably won't really be
missed much anyway except perhaps when it is time to collect the
offerings. Dear brethren, we are not admonished to assemble together to
warm pews or to play "Simon says" or to sit like ducks in a row
listening to the grand and mighty "wizard" of OZ up front
(behind or in front of the curtain).
In a conventional church where interaction is limited and highly controlled, (as compared to a highly interactive house church), the appointed times that the congregation gathers together do not usually present opportunities for much if any interaction among the
"groundlings" (i.e. the laity who are second-class participants in the church meeting). In fact, the conventional church meetings are more like theatrical shows and in effect are merely religious performances that we happen to call "worship services". And in all that time we spend together during those performances we seldom if ever have a chance to find out what is really going on in the lives of those around us who are supposed to be our "brothers" and "sisters".
What is the purpose of assembling together:
Romans 12:4 - "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office"
What does "office" mean? Maybe if we look at that word we might figure out some things about church membership, or at least about being member of the body of Christ. The word translated as "office" is the Greek word "praxis":
4234 praxiv praxis prax'-is from 4238; TDNT-6:642,927; n f
AV-deed 4, work 1, office 1; 6
1) a doing, a mode of acting, a deal, a transaction
1a) the doings of the apostles
1b) in a bad sense, wicked deed, crime, wicked doings (our practices i.e. trickery)
2) a thing to be done, business
As we see below, the Greek word "praxis" is usually translated as "deeds" then once as
"works" (which is similar to deeds) then once as "office".
Luke 23:51 - "(The same had not consented to the counsel and deed <4234> of them;) he was of
Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God."
Acts 19:18 - "And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their
deeds <4234>."
Romans 8:13 - "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the
deeds <4234> of the body, ye shall live."
Colossians 3:9 - "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his
deeds <4234>;"
Matthew 16:27 - "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his
works <4234>."
Romans 12:4 - "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same
office <4234>:"
Believers should be doing their "deeds", or in
other words, utilizing the specific gifts that God has blessed them with, to
make disciples and to bless others. Bearing on
another's burdens: Where do we get our ideas for what we are to do when we get together as a church? The Bible calls the church the "family of God" and the "household of faith" and yet what most churches do when the people gather together is nothing like what most people do when they gather together as a family. It is a fact of life that if we are not spending quality time in each other's homes and interacting together in an informal manner, we are not ever going to be the kind of church that Christ commanded us to be...
"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." [Galatians 6:2]
Those who wish to be honest with themselves and with God have got to admit that there is no way to
bear one another's burdens if we don't know what those burdens are and if we don't even know all the names of everyone in our congregation. Based on their involvement in the lives of the rest of the members of the local body, you would have to conclude that the members of the average conventional church have no idea what God is talking about in
Galatians 6:2. The purpose of the local church gathering together on the Lord's day is not to put on some religious show for God no matter how many people are doing
that and no matter how long we have been doing that and no matter how many good reasons we can think of for continuing to do things that way.
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If we wish to really serve Christ in spirit and in truth, we will do our best to find out what the biblical patterns for church life are and we will do our best to live according to those patterns. [see the article "Biblical Patterns For The Local Church" for more about this]. If we are doing church in a sub-optimal way then we need to stop making excuses and stop doing church in a sub-optimal way... plain and simple.
What kind of marriage would you have if you interacted with your spouse the way
you interact with the people in church on the Lord's day?... if you only
interacted with your spouse in large groups, in buildings outside the home, and
in an environment where you can't really talk much with the people around you?
And what do you know about your pastor? Does he have a good relationship
with his wife? Has he ever been married before? How does he relate
to his children and them to him. Do you know enough about his PERSONAL
LIFE to be able to say if he meets the criteria in scripture (Titus 1, 1Timothy
3) for a church leader? And likewise, how well do you know the personal
lives of the elders?.... what they do in their "spare" time, how they relate to
their families, how committed they are to sharing the gospel, how much they
encourage others to do so, and equip others to do so, and train others to do so
BY EXAMPLE? |
Church Attendance:
As for churches that put a great deal of emphasis on attendance, it is probably because that is the main thing
(and easy thing) they use to measure success or failure. Or perhaps it is because they think a believer is supposed to get everything they need from the sermon and the religious show on Sunday and
perhaps a few other highly structured church meetings.
However, from a biblical point of view, the success or failure of the leadership should be measured by how the believers live, how they relate to each other and care for each other and how adept they become at making disciples themselves. But how in the world can the leadership of the average church know what is really going on in the lives of
the congregation if they are doing all the talking every week and if everyone else is way out
"in the audience"? Therefore, how can they "gauge" the success of "their ministry" except by
numbers of bodies in attendance.
The point of assembling together:
The conventional church and what goes on when its "members" gather together is simply not of God.
It may not be entirely sinful or completely unscriptural, but it does not
adequately accomplish the task God sets before us: bearing one another's burdens
and making disciples (and all that entails such as evangelism and bible study,
etc.). Conventional Christianity is patterned after false religions including
the Catholic church. It is the invention of man and is patterned after man's ideas of what religion is all about: impressing God, doing things for God, etc.
It is the result of an incomplete reformation, one that reformed and restored
the Gospel but did not do much about reforming or restoring ecclesiology. What God wants His children to do when they get together is for them to love one another...
John 13:34 - "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
John 13:35 - "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have
love one to another."
John 15:12 - "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."
John 15:17 - "These things I command you, that ye love one another."
Romans 12:10 - "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;"
Romans 13:8 - "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law."
Galatians 5:13 - "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but
by love serve one another."
Ephesians 4:2 - "With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;"
1 Thessalonians 3:12 - "And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:"
1 Thessalonians 4:9 - "But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to
love one another."
Hebrews 10:24 - "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:"
1 Peter 1:22 - "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto
unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:"
1 Peter 3:8 - "Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:"
1 John 3:11 - "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should
love one another."
1 John 3:23 - "And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and
love one another, as he gave us commandment."
1 John 4:7 - "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God."
1 John 4:11 - "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
1 John 4:12 - "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." 2 John 1:5
- "And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we
love one another."
Are you surprised and even shocked at how many times we are commanded to love one another? I was. Yes, I know that loving one another is a big subject unto itself but
in order for believers to truly express love for one another a lot of
interaction is required in order for needs to be determined and for gifts to be
put into practice. Try to love your husband or wife by interacting with him or her like you interact with the person 3 pews behind you every week - assuming you are not one of those
"last row" attendees. :-)
God's kind of love is not easy. It takes hard work and it takes quality time together as a church family. And don't kid yourself. It doesn't happen any other way, especially in this busy, fast-paced world we live in where it is hard enough to find the time to meet on Sunday, never mind visit a church member in their home during the week. The conventional church just does not provide the forum or the environment for relationship building to occur and yet the regular meetings of the church are often the only time that members of the local congregation see each other. The sad fact of the matter is that the leadership have set in place a structure that hinders and actually prevents
people from really getting to know each other. It is a structure that is designed to maintain the status quo
by actually insulating people FROM each other. Since you have a structure that prevents people from asking any questions, then
the church creed or doctrinal statement never has to change. What a relief that is for the leadership.
Also, when you don't interact much you never have to deal with the weaknesses of the flesh that your brothers and sisters in Christ AND YOU have. What a relief that is for both you and the leadership! How sad, really, because we are missing out on the gifts that God has given to ALL of His children, not just to a select few seminary trained, highly energetic and charismatic (and perhaps controlling) speakers who love preeminence. If they don't love preeminence then ask
them why they are not spending time finding out who else in the congregation could be leading Bible studies or doing many of the other things they do. Of course the pastor is paid to do what he does so why should someone who is not paid do those things (except that maybe we should not have paid pastors...
and church leaders should be delegating work and grooming future leaders rather
than doing everything).
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Another "advantage" of the easy conventional way
of doing church is that it cuts down on the need for church discipline,
reserving that "nasty" task for just monumental sins like adultery, which
usually don't have to be dealt with either, because by then, the offending party
has usually left "the church". He hasn't left the body of Christ, but we
don't look at it that way, so we don't have to deal with the issue... we excuse
ourselves from going after them and confronting them by saying they left "the
church" or "they withdrew their membership". Or we make it easy on us and
them by simply mailing them a letter telling them we will cancel their
"membership" if they don't repent. Meanwhile, we expect them to trust us
and come back to the church that had no real personal involvement in their lives
until it was time to kick them out. The only other "sins" a church might
initiate some kind of discipline with would be those things the leaders can see
from the pulpit like poor "attendance", poor tithing, or gossip (complaining
about the leaders - the pulpit popes - is what that usually means). |
The marriage analogy:
Let us now examine the stark contrast between God's idea of a local church and man's idea. Just look at these verses below. They are clearly a reference to the similarity of marriage relationship to the kind of deeply committed, heavily involved relationship that believers should have with one another in the local church:
Eph 5:28 - "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but
nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
The conventional church - an unusual body - it only has a head:
Paul says the body of Christ has many members, not just a head...
1Cor 12:12 - "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 14 For the body is not one member, but many. 15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? 16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? 17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? 18 But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. 19 And if they were all one member, where were the body? 20 But now are they many members, yet but one body. 21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you."
Similarly, the pastor cannot say to the congregation:
"I have no need of thee except your tithes and offerings and for you to play Simon Says with me every Sunday,
never correcting me or challenging my teachings or directing me to teach some
other area of doctrine.".
And the congregation cannot say to the pastor: "We have no need of anyone else in the congregation except the pastor and other leaders who do all the bible studying for us and make us feel like we have not forsaken the assembling of ourselves because we have
'participated' in the 'Simon-says Church-of-the-status-quo' on Sunday.". Rather we need to look at the rest of the passage from 1 Corinthians 12:
1Cor 12:22 "Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are
necessary: 23 And those members of the body, which we think to be less
honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. 24 For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: 25 That
there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have
the same care one for another. 26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be
honoured, all the members rejoice with it."
And then we need to realize that this is saying we are supposed to be in an environment that allows us to really get to know each other and get involved in ministering to one another and discipling one another. AMEN?
A structure that nurtures or one that encourages schisms:
Does a church that allows the pastor to do everything (plan, structure and control everything that believers do when they get together), create a schism between the leadership and the poor ordinary pew warmers? It sure does. It creates a caste system with the leadership viewed as all-knowing untouchables and the rest of the folks just ignorant tithe payers who need someone to make them feel part of a Sunday morning religious club.
Does a church that treats "official members" differently than members that have not "joined up" create a schism between those that are "in" and those that are "out"? Should we be figuring out who is a member by whether or not they took some classes and signed some forms? Or rather, should we be figuring out who is a member by spending enough quality time, interactive time, together with them so that we know if they really are sinners who have been saved by the grace of God?
And do we want a "system" of membership in place
that creates an artificial wall between us and believers who happen to
fellowship elsewhere? God wants His children to be of "the same mind":
2Cor 1:10 - "Now I beseech you, brethren, by
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that
there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in
the same mind and in the same judgment."
Concluding remarks:
Lastly, are you a member of Christ's church? Are you truly saved? If so, are you concerned enough about the local body of Christ and what the Bible says about what your relationship to them should be, to jettison the unscriptural
"Simon-says" conventional church show and start worshipping God in spirit and in truth? When God says "love one another" are you going to continue to play church
instead and continue to convince yourself that the church of the status quo is
really what God was speaking of when He called the church a family (Eph. 3:15)
and the household of faith (Gal. 6:10)? The unsaved are noted for their
temples of worship, their focus on buildings and on the outward appearances of
religion. Should the children of the living God be indistinguishable from
them or should they rather be obviously different by virtue of their distaste for outward
religiosity and their love for the things that really matter?
Matthew
23:27-28 - "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited
sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so
ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Matthew
24:1-2 - "And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for
to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." 1 Sam
16:7 - "But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man
seeth;
for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." Luke
16:15 - "And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God."
We may think that where we worship and what we do when we get
together is not really all that important. But it most certainly is.
Conventional ways of doing church enable us to hide in the crowd and hide behind
superficial relationships. Whereas in churches meeting in the intimacy of the
home where there is lots of interaction, everyone can easily find opportunities
to use their gifts. And yes, we will soon find everyone's rough edges and imperfections
coming to the
surface, reminding us that we are not alone in our struggles with sin in us and
around us. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."
[John 13:35]
Ray Kane
- For more articles related to the subject
of "Doing Church", click
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