6 Reasons Why You Should Join A Church

There are many reasons Christians join a church yet some of them mostly deal with preference. Other reasons might to do with the relationships within the church. Whatever the reasons are, the question comes to mind is are any of them biblical?

Jeffrey Johnson gives 6 biblical reasons why Christians should join a church:

1. Church Membership Is Assumed in the New Testament

2. Church Membership Is Evidence of the New Birth

3. Church Membership Is Essential for Sanctification

4. Church Membership Is Essential to Loving Christ

5. Church Membership Is Essential to Obedience

6. Church Membership Is God’s Means of Accountability

Read the entire post here. 

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Are You A Bandwagon Church Member?

The past couple of years in sports has been really exciting. Two years ago, we saw the Chicago Cubs win the World Series after 108 years. Last year, we saw my favorite baseball team, the Houston Astros win their first World Series. Then this past February, we witnessed the Philadelphia Eagles win their first Super Bowl. Dedicated fans celebrated while the fans of the losing team roll their eyes, yet each team probably got something else. They got new fans that were normally not fans in the beginning, who are called Bandwagon fans.

Bandwagon fans are the type of fans that stick with a team only if they are winning. I am sure the Astros, Eagles, and Golden State Warriors have gotten a few of those. Unfortunately, this type of mentality has even crept into the church, which I will dubbed "Bandwagon Church Members." These are the members who only attend church when things are good. For those in ministry, I am sure you have seen them time and time again.

If the church is growing, they are there. If the church is hurting, they scatter. When a pastor leaves, they leave, which happens a lot in the solo pastor model, but also can happen with a plurality of elders. There is one pastor who left his church to work in another church in the same city and a couple for his previous church followed him to the new church. This is very similar to LeBron James fans who cheered for Cleveland, then Miami, then Cleveland again, and quite possibly the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Bible says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near" (Hebrews 10:24-25). The church is to exhort one another and not neglect meeting with one another no matter what is going on. Whether the church is succeeding or not, we are to be faithful to one another.

Hebrews also says, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you" (13:17). We are to under the leadership of our elders. They watch over us through the good and the bad. If you are only at your church when things are good, you are hurt yourself spiritually when you jump off the "bandwagon" when things are bad.

1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and 1 Peter 4 talk about using the gifts God has given us for the building up of the body. A bandwagon church member will most likely hardly engage with anyone in the church, let alone, serve anyone because they are only in the church for themselves. As I mentioned earlier, when the pastor leaves, they leave. If you leave when your pastor leaves, as one person puts it, you were never on mission with the church. You were only there for yourself.

If you are faithfully committed to your church and serving them in anyway, praise God. If you are only part of a church just to "jump ship," I pray you will consider faithfully join the church God has placed you in. Talked with your elders or pastor. Speak to a deacon or other church leaders. Be faithful to your congregation not just when things are good, but also when things are bad. You are part of the body and your local church needs you.

Benefits of Church Membership

This was adapted from a tweet by 9 Marks:

QUESTION:

What are the benefits of church membership to the individual Christian?

ANSWER:

— It commits you, the Christian.

It’s good to commit yourself to love and serve others. You will grow as a Christian as you commit to encourage, build up, strengthen, serve, rebuke, and pray for other Christians.

— Others are committed to you.

Becoming a member of a church means joining with an entire group of Christians who have now covenanted to watch over you spiritually. If you’re a member of a church you have an entire church full of people who are publicly committed to loving you and serving you and watching over you.

— Elder protection.

If you’re a member of a church, that church’s elders and pastors should care for you, pray for you, and personally counsel and teach you. As a member of their church, they are accountable to God for how they lead you (Heb. 13:17).

— Safety net.

In his book Stop Dating the Church, Josh Harris points out that it’s comforting to know his church would kick him out rather than tolerate his unrepentant sin. Being a church member means that a whole church full of people are committed to helping you live a life that’s pleasing to God, even to the point of excluding you from the church if you stop repenting of sin. While this sounds harsh to some, to those of us who know the deceitfulness of sin, this is an immensely comforting and encouraging reality (Heb. 3:12).

— Assurance.

Membership is the church’s affirmation of the validity of someone’s profession of faith (Matt. 16:19, 18:18). The church looks at a person’s life, hears their explanation of the gospel and how they came to believe it, and says, “You look like a Christian to us. So join us. Watch over our lives and we’ll watch over yours.” So while membership in a church doesn’t guarantee that someone is a Christian, it should assure believers of the genuineness of their faith.

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Is Church Membership Taught In The Bible?

It seems a lot of Christians argue over the issue for church membership. Some say the Bible does not say anything about it while others do. Some have also said that church membership is just to keep an eye out on the people just to see if they are coming or not.

Most of the arguments have been over the Bible and church membership. Does the Bible really teach church membership? According to Greg Gilbert, the answer is yes. Greg recently addressed what the Bible said in the area of church membership over at the International Mission Board's website:

If you’re like most people, the word “membership” probably doesn’t cause you to well up with any deep spiritual emotion. For most of us, membership is something most associated with junk mail from credit card companies or a high-pressure sales pitch at a gym. When it comes to the church, perhaps it’s viewed as a bureaucratic tool for keeping track of people. Some consider it irretrievably Western—a faintly imperialist concept that really ought to be abandoned when we begin to plant churches in other cultures.

I understand that impression, especially given how many churches treat the concept and reality of membership. But what’s needed is to return to the Bible itself and see whether it talks about church membership, and if so, what the nature and meaning and purpose of that concept is in the first place.

Church Membership According to Jesus

The idea of church membership began to take shape in Matthew 16 and 18 when Jesus first began to constitute his church. There he gave the church the keys of the kingdom, which means that he gave it authority to speak in his name both to what the gospel is and who is rightly confessing the gospel.

If someone understands and confesses the gospel rightly, the church is given authority by King Jesus to say, “Yes, you’re a genuine believer in Christ,” and is, therefore, to be baptized and join in the life of the church. If not, the church also has the authority, granted by the King, to say, “No, you don’t understand the gospel, you’re not confessing it and living according to it, and therefore we will not continue to affirm that you’re a Christian.” That’s the power of the keys Jesus gave to the church, and that ability to affirm who is confessing the gospel rightly and who is not is the outline of what we mean by the term “church membership.”

Church Membership in the Book of Acts

You can see that reality casting its shadow in the story written in the Book of Acts from the beginning of the church. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached the gospel and told people to be baptized. Then, in Acts 2:41, “three thousand souls were added to their number.” Even at the beginning, then, the first Christians knew who they were. The life of the church wasn’t just a matter of “come when you can.” There was a defined, recognized group of people who believed, were baptized, and were part of the number.

It’s not just that they knew each other, though. Those early Christians lived life together. They attended the temple together (2:46) as more and more were “added to their number” (2:47) until in Acts 4:4 the number had risen to five thousand (and that’s just counting the men)! To be a part of “the number” wasn’t just a lifeless bureaucratic reality, either. Acts 4:32 reports that they were “of one heart and soul.”

Amazingly, even with upwards of five thousand people in “the number,” that earliest church in Jerusalem continued to meet together. Acts 5:12 says that they were “all together” in a large place called Solomon’s Portico; 6:2 even says the “full number” of them came together in a business meeting to discuss how to care better for widows. And through all of this, those early Christians called themselves a church— that is an assembly, a gathering.

So, in the very first church in Jerusalem, even as large as it was, the first Christians knew who they were. There were those who were part of the number, and there were those who were not, and the dividing line between the two was baptism. A person would become a believer, the church would exercise the keys and say, “Yes, you seem to be a genuine believer,” then he or she would be baptized and thereby join the life of the church—its joys and pains and problems and solutions. That’s membership.

Church Membership throughout the New Testament

Membership casts its shadow in other places in the Bible too. It’s seen in Matthew 18, for example, where Jesus explained how the church is to use the authority of the keys to remove its affirmation of someone’s profession of faith. The end of that process is that the person is made an outsider. That is, they’re no longer one of “the number.”

First Corinthians 5 gives us a look at another similar situation in which Paul tells the church in 5:2 to “remove this man from among you.” Obviously, that doesn’t mean they are supposed to physically toss him out of the room or bar the doors against him. No, they wanted the man to attend the gatherings of the church, to hear the word, and repent. What it means to “remove” him is that they are to make it clear that they are withdrawing their affirmation of his claim to be a Christian. When you assemble, Paul told them, “hand him over to Satan.” That’s keys of the kingdom language: They are to transfer him out of the church (the realm of King Jesus) and into the world (the realm of Satan).

Sometimes, I think we assume that because all that we find in the New Testament happened two thousand years ago, the early church must have accomplished it in some way that’s more interesting—more organic—than the way we might accomplish it now. But apparently, they did it exactly like we might.

Deciding by Majority Vote

In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul returned to the situation he faced in 1 Corinthians 5 (in which he told the church to remove the unrepentant man from among them) and told the church to bring the man back into the number of disciples. The man repented and, therefore, should be restored. But look in 2:6. Paul said that the church took the action of disaffirming the man’s profession of faith “by the majority.” And how did they determine a majority? They counted! Apparently, the church voted, whether by voice or hands or ballot, and that vote was the church’s way of speaking and acting, of exercising the authority of the keys that had been granted to them by King Jesus.

The Boundary around God’s People

When you pull it all together, the important thing to see is that the Bible consistently talks about the church having a boundary. There are people who are in and people who are out. Definitively. There is “a number,” and a person is part of it or not.

What’s more, that reality is a formal and recognized relationship. Both the church and the individual Christian recognize that such a relationship exists, and the church acts in a formal way both to create and dissolve it. To create it, it baptizes (or recognizes a prior baptism). To dissolve it, it votes to “hand someone over to Satan.”

Membership Means Relationship

But still, the question remains: does the Bible ever explicitly talk about church membership? Yes, it does. It even uses the word. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul addresses a particular local church in the city of Corinth, explaining to them that instead of being divided and jealous of each other, they should be united. In the course of that argument he says in 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

There it is. All those shadows in the New Testament—of making someone part of the number, of putting someone out of the number, of life lived together in mutual commitment—those shadows point to this biblical image of the local church being the Body of Christ.

Membership Means Commitment

What that means is that membership is not a cold, lifeless word having to do with names on a list. It’s a flesh-and-blood, lively word that describes the parts of a body. That, after all, is what the word “member” means. It’s a fascinating image, really, because it captures vividly what it means to be part of “the number” of a church.

For one thing, it simply underlines the truth—which we see again and again in the Bible—that a local church has a boundary. Think about it. It’s actually very clear what is a part of your body and what is not. Maybe you wear a wedding ring. I do, and it almost never comes off my finger. It’s about as close to my body as anything can possibly be. You might even call it a regular, committed attender and participant in the life of my body. But I also know that it’s not a part of my body. What’s more, as close as that ring may be to my body, it doesn’t really share in my body’s life, its pleasure, or its pain. If I stub my toe, my ring doesn’t react. My finger does though.

Membership Is Not a Modern, Western Concept

The point and heart of church membership isn’t necessarily signing something, or having your name on a list or in a booklet. The point is a mutually recognized, formal relationship between a Christian and church in which both of them say—in a way that’s recognized by both—that “I am committed to you.” I will share your joy and your pain. I will take responsibility for you. I will love and care for you. That’s the meaning of membership. It’s not a modern, Western concept, but rather a deeply biblical reality born of the spiritual union between Christ and his church—the reality that each local church is the body of Christ, and we as individual Christians are members of it.


Sources:

Yes, The Bible Does Teach Church Membership, Part 1

Yes, The Bible Does Teach Church Membership, Part 2

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Book Review: Don't Fire Your Church Members by Jonathan Leeman

As a Christian who has been in Southern Baptist Churches from most of his walk with Jesus, one thing that was drilled in every church member was that there are two offices in the church, Pastor and Deacon. The pastor preaches and gives direction for the church while the deacons help make decisions for the church. If you read the entire Bible, you will see that it almost true, Yes, there are deacons in the church, but they serve the physical needs of the church while the elders (notice the plurality) take care of the spiritual needs of the church.

A great majority of the Bible shows that Elders and Deacons are the main two offices of the church. Jonathan Leeman contends that there is another office in the church. This office is one not discussed a whole lot. That office is church member.

Leeman writes about what he causes the case for congregationalism, in his book, Don't Fire Your Church Members. He does state that Elders and Deacons are essential in the church and you cannot have a church without them. The same thing can also be said about church members.

This book provides a good foundation as to why the congregation is important for discipleship as well as being leaders in ministry. Yes, Elders and Deacons fill that role, but they cannot be everywhere and do everything. Leeman gives solid, Biblical arguments as to why The Bible supports Congregationalism.

Congregationalism in no way diminishes what the Lord has established in the offices of Elder and Deacon, in fact, it affirms it. If you are not aware of what congregationalism is or don't support it, this book is for you. Elders and Deacons will benefit from this book as they begin to study on making their church healthy.

Thanks B&H Publishing for allowing me to read this book.

Other books by Jonathan Leeman:

Church Discipline

Church Membership

Reverberation

The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love

Baptist Foundations with Mark Dever

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