When the discussion of ecclesiology comes up among theologians, several different issues come to the fore, but one contemporary issue which fails to receive much attention is the question of church membership.1 While systematic theologies discuss the structure of the church, its officers and its ordinances, they typically do not discuss at any length the question of whether Christians ought to be joined to a local church.2 In the past, the church has dealt with some aspects of membership, such as maintaining regenerate church membership or removing inactive members from the rolls, but today the church faces a different problem with regard to membership, many Christians do not see a need to join a local church.
Throughout the history of the church, it has been customary for everyone who accepted Christ to be joined to a local church. Since the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the church has been seen as a valuable and important factor in the growth of individual Christians and the body of Christ, collectively. For generations, the church exercised its right to join to itself individuals who had demonstrated the genuine nature of their faith.3 In today’s church, however, the individual acts more like a consumer choosing to join whatever church offers the best benefits, or all too often choosing not to join a church while still enjoying the activities and benefits afforded by regular attendance.
This behavior is not surprising, however, when one considers the data being reported by pollster George Barna. According to one Barna study, less than twenty percent of American adults and only one-third of evangelicals believe that their faith ought to be developed within the fellowship of a local church. This attitude stems from what George Barna calls a devaluing of “communal faith experiences” and an unwillingness to surrender control of our priorities and “the outcomes we’ve worked so hard to produce” which is partially due to our American “cultural bias toward independence and fluid relationships.”4 This rugged individualism, along with rampant consumerism, commitment phobia and skepticism hinder the acceptance of church membership and authority in modern American evangelicalism.5
While there may be many underlying factors which influence contemporary attitudes toward church membership, the primary question ought to be whether the Bible gives any clear instruction on the issue. For many Christians, the absence of a so called proof-text in favor of church membership is convincing proof that there was no such thing in the New Testament church, nor should there be in the modern church. While this may stem from a lack of understanding concerning the construction of a systematic theology, it nevertheless is an opportunity for clear teaching on both the grammatical-historical interpretation of the Bible and the principles taught in Scripture on the topic of local church membership.
Even though there are no direct statements instructing believers to join a church, there is ample support in the New Testament for the concept of a formal church membership. Jesus’ statements about the church suggest that he viewed the church as the primary place where God’s will would be carried out on earth,6 and the historical record of the establishment and growth of the church in Acts bears this out.7 In most cases, when the New Testament mentions the church, there is no doubt that it is referring primarily to local churches, and when a passage appears to be referring to the universal church, it may safely be applied to local churches as well.8 Since the church is primarily defined as a local, visible assembly, there must be some way to describe who belongs to any particular congregation.
Understanding this belonging will have serious implications for the doctrine of ecclesiology. In order to explain its impact, it will be necessary to discuss the boundary markers which distinguish the church from the world, as well as the church’s responsibility to each individual Christian and the Christian’s responsibilities to other Christians and the church. Thus the question of church membership becomes a question of the authority structure in the life of a Christian, the Christian’s willingness to submit to that authority, and the church’s commitment to the wise and careful exercise of its God-given power.
1 This and subsequent posts on the subject are derived from a paper on the subject of church membership originally written in 2010.
2 For example, Henry Thiessen in his Lectures in Systematic Theology spends 27 pages discussing the doctrine of the church, and only two sentences concerning church membership. He says, “In the early church, when a person responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ, he was added to the church. There was no question whether he ought to join the local assembly, this was taken for granted.” Henry C. Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1979), 317.
3 Mark Dever, “Regaining Meaningful Church Membership,” in Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches ed. Thomas White, Jason G. Duesing, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2008), 50.
4 George Barna, Americans Have Commitment Issues, New Survey Shows, (The Barna Group, 18 April 2006, accessed 20 November 2010) http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/267-americans-have-commitment-issues-new-survey-shows.
5 Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 357.
6 In both Matthew 16 and 18, the power of binding and loosing is clearly intended to be exercised on earth, specifically in a gathering of the church (18:19-20).
7 Consider the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, where the entire church was involved in discerning what doctrine should be taught concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism (15:22).
8 The debate over whether the church is primarily defined as universal or local, visible or invisible is beyond the scope of this paper. In order to facilitate a clearer discussion of the issue of church membership, the following definition of the church will be used: The church is, “the whole body of those who through Christ’s death have been savingly reconciled to God and have received new life. It includes all such persons whether in heaven or on earth. While universal in nature, it finds expression in local groupings of believers that display the same qualities as does the body of Christ as a whole.” Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 1044. See also Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: the Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1998), 140. “The local church is not a concrete realization of the existing local church, but rather the real anticipation or proleptic realization of the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God.”