Church Membership 1: Why every Christian should be a member of a local Church

Introduction:

Christianity has been displaced as the dominant religion of the West. Fewer people are becoming Christians, and the churches are emptying and closing down. A common reaction to this trend is one of overreaction where the Church is being pronounced outdated and an irrelevant organization. It is being claimed that Church as we know it is antiquated and we need to change or die. We are being told that what has been happening for the last 2000 years is now suddenly ineffective and we need a radical overhaul. Spirituality is in but church is out, community is in but organizations are out, Jesus is trending but Christians are not. This has given rise to the popularity of churchless Christianity. Church without buildings, church as the meeting of a group of Christians, Christians without leaders and followers, meetings without structure, meeting without repetition, Christians getting together without preaching, the Lord Supper, prayer, singing, or bible reading. And this we are told is having Jesus without the church.Christianity has been displaced as the dominant religion of the West. Fewer people are becoming Christians, and the churches are emptying and closing down. A common reaction to this trend is one of overreaction where the Church is being pronounced outdated and an irrelevant organisation. It is being claimed that Church as we know it is antiquated and we need to change or die. We are being told that what has been happening for the last 2000 years is now suddenly ineffective and we need a radical overhaul. Spirituality is in but church is out, community is in but organisations are out, Jesus is trending but Christians are not. This has given rise to the popularity of churchless Christianity. Church without buildings, church as the meeting of a group of Christians, Christians without leaders and followers, meetings without structure, meeting without repetition, Christians getting together without preaching, the Lord Supper, prayer, singing, or bible reading. And this we are told is having Jesus without the church.

One of my favourite authors is Kevin De Young and he has a name for this fad, decorpulation. Decapitation is the removal of the head from the body, decorpulation is the separation of the body of Christ, the Church, from the head of the Church, Christ. Another striking image he uses is the one where a person has friend but doesn’t want anything to do with his friends wife, openly criticising her and rolling his eyes every time she speaks. ‘Some people think that Jesus wants friends like that.’ Those who reject His bride but still want Him. This attitude towards the church is receiving confirmation in various books that are being written, with titles such as ‘Quitting Church;’ ‘They like Jesus but not the Church,’ ‘Out of the ooze, Unlikely love letters to the church beyond the pew,’ etc. There are even terms legitimising this group such as ‘disenfranchised Christians,’ ‘the dechurched,’ ‘unChristians,’ etc.

There are several legitimate criticisms that are made by this church escaping group, the church has failed in many ways. For example we have become sidetracked in our mission; we are hypocrites at times; we can be loveless; we can become institutionalised and many other sins. However, this does not mean that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. The church is not a man-made institution to be exchanged for a more innovative idea like the latest technology, no it is God’s institution. Our authority for what we are and what we do is not sought from our critics but comes from the word of God. Church is not an optional extra on your personal spiritual journey but the community you are called to walk with. It is not the place of possible blessing but the appointed place of blessing.

Today we are beginning a series on being a member of MRBC. We do not have membership classes yet, as we have not had regular applications for membership. Lately we have had several requests and we are taking this opportunity to educate those seeking membership and encourage and remind those who are already members. Today I would like to speak to this question: Why every Christian should be a member of a local church. I am aware that membership is a despised teaching in NZ, and suspected by many as being unbiblical. I believe that this is due to a reducing of the fundamentals to those things that relate to salvation and the secondary though important teachings that relate to the church and its practices are marginalised. We see things like baptism, the means of grace, church discipline and the officers of the church have been minimised. I also think that we have become childish in the way we read the bible, we have fallen into a proof texting mentality wanting something to be spelled out in simplistic terms and cannot see things that are necessarily inferred in the text. We have lost the skill that our fathers in the faith had to derive doctrine from scripture, for example, there is no single text that uses the word Trinity or spells out both the three-ness in person and oneness in essence that our creeds and confessions state. This is not because the bible does not teach these things and we have made them up, no it is a case of us becoming childish and superficial in our treatment of the bible.

I hope to show that the bible teaches, or assumes that every Christian will be formally identified with a specific manifestation of Christ’s Church in accountability, in service for witness and in submission. I hope to disabuse us of the individualistic influence on our thinking that views true spirituality as a personal journey of discovery but growing as a part of an interdependent family. My prayer is that once we have seen what God’s desire for us as a church is that your mind will be renewed from the world’s consumeristic, self-oriented, pseudo versions of the church and you will be staggered at the radical counter-cultural community we are supposed to be. My prayer is that we will begin to fulfil what Christ said when he spoke to His disciples saying, ‘by this the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another.’ If you have a high view of evangelism you should have a high view of the church. It is not our goal to sell our brand, to promote our organisation, or pretend that we are perfect and have it all together but to be what God made us to be so that as Paul puts it in Ephesians 3:10, ‘so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.’ God displays His perfection through the church. God is best glorified when we are what He intended us to be. Do you want to glorify God? He intended that we do that through being the church. If you have a high view of worship you should have a high view of the church.