The unity and fullness of the body of Christ can never be fully expressed in the local congregation. It is but one member of the body of Christ. Nevertheless, it is in and through the local body that our participation in the body of Christ is enjoyed. Against the modern notion that church membership is an outdated, restrictive practice, one cannot legitimately claim to be a part of Christ’s body unless he is a recognized part of a local congregation that makes up his body. Imagine an eye claiming to be part of the human body while rolling down the sidewalk, occasionally jumping into an eye socket, or sometimes refusing to align with the other eye. Such a ridiculous picture is the anatomical equivalent of refusing to become a member of a local church while claiming to be a part of the body of Christ.
The concept of church membership is everywhere taught in Scripture, though it is one of the many biblical doctrines and practices that cannot be established by a single verse. To vindicate church membership as a duty, it is necessary to survey the entire testimony of Scripture. From the beginning, God manifests great concern for the number and identity of his people, more specifically, of his earthly leaders having the ability to clearly identify his people. This is sometimes determined by taking a census, as we see in Exodus, Numbers, and Nehemiah, as well as by the practice of maintaining careful family lines/records that establish covenant identity and, thus, membership in the covenant community, i.e., the church. In Psalm 87, it is said that the great boast of the nations in the days of the Messiah will be that God writes their names in the roll book of Zion (87:6). Jesus Christ possesses the official roll book, which is sometimes called the “Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27). In the apostolic church, there was clearly a “not of us” and “of us,” a distinction gained through the confession of “Jesus is Lord” within the local church and the exercise of discipline by the church’s elders (1 John 2:19; Matt. 18:15-20). Indeed, this is the main consequence of the heavenly ratification of the church’s earthly, local discipline: to bring her roll book into closer correspondence with Christ’s, thus manifesting who are his and who are not, or at least who are entitled to be identified as his at a particular time. Thus, membership in the church is not an undefined, nebulous connection with the church or some religious association that calls itself a church. Mere participation or informal connection is an insufficient replacement for formal membership. It is critical to know who and who is not part of the church, of a particular church.
Without membership in the local congregation, for example, the biblical command to distinguish “insiders” from “outsiders” is impossible to obey (1 Corinthians 5:12). The difference between the church and the world, along with every duty the believer has with respect to the world, is undefined and impossible without specific ways to distinguish members of the church from members of the world. Submission to ordained leadership suffers the same fate, for “obey your elders” becomes as uncertain as “shepherd the flock” without formal, local ties. Authority and submission require carefully delineated structures of accountability and obedience. Imagine telling a woman, “Obey your husband,” if the man with whom she lives is not her husband, just someone who happens to be sharing her bed and living quarters at a given time. The very concept of obedience in marriage assumes that there is a formal, legal way of distinguishing your husband from all other men. Similarly, excommunication assumes there is a formal status of “communing” that excommunication severs. You see, then, that without a formal and legal way to identify church members, fundamental aspects of body life are impossible to fulfill. Therefore, any theory of church membership or non-church membership that leads to such conclusions is not the will of the Head of the church.
Since this is the case, why has the concept of church membership fallen on such hard times? I suggest five reasons. The first is ignorance. This is not pejorative but an honest assessment of the effects of piecemeal, platitude preaching. When the Bible is treated primarily as a handbook of personal piety to help the individual believer, God’s people will manifest ignorance of the Bible’s directives concerning the privilege and duty of local church membership. They will be unaware of the Bible’s persistent inculcation of the centrality, nature, and structure of the local congregation, especially its government and discipline. The Bible’s frequent observations, commands, and examples in this area will seem irrelevant to those infatuated with the latest spiritual gimmick. The second is spiritual autonomy. The self-willed coming and going of believers is fed by the happy-go-lucky leadership of the church. Preachers handle the Bible, as well as the church’s worship and government, with a cavalier attitude that produces and encourages flighty Christians. If the leaders of the church give way to the stubborn spirit of the age, if they are unwilling to fight for the Headship of Jesus Christ over the church as its only King, if they do not take the Bible seriously and authoritatively on the subject of church membership, nothing better can be expected of their followers. Thus, it seems that the modern aversion to formal church membership is actually an extension of our aversion to authority, accountability, and obedience in general.
Perhaps the most potentially dangerous reason for sub-biblical views of church membership is the tendency of many professing believers to view the church as an impediment to true spirituality. Many popular books make this claim. Some have even suggested that believers should leave the “institutional” church for the sake of their piety and families. Still others have even set up extra-church “accreditation” agencies to identify “safe” churches for families. Admittedly, the candlestick of our Savior has been removed from many of the mainline denominations, but this is not because they are “institutional” but because the light of the gospel is no longer to be found within their walls. Without the preaching of the gospel of sovereign grace and the regular, biblical administration of the sacraments, there can be no true church, and it is perilous to remain in such churches, however attractive the claims of pedigree, antiquity, or supposed unity may deceive the unwary and otherwise dissatisfied. Despite this tragedy, in which we all suffer, outside membership in the local church, there is ordinarily no possibility of salvation. This strong claim, which is found in virtually all the Reformed confessions, incontrovertibly follows from Scripture. The church alone is the pillar and ground of the truth – not individual believers or families. The church alone has the means of grace and the keys of the kingdom of heaven – not spiritual gurus or religious clubs that call themselves churches. The church alone has a divinely authorized government, discipline, doctrine, and worship – not writers of religious fiction that purport to have discovered the “truth” about God, the Bible, and Jesus. Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, his church, locally and universally, earthly and heavenly. Into the local congregation the Lord Jesus Christ gathers his elect: nowhere else (Acts 2:47).
Commitment to local church membership also suffers because most evangelicals view their churches as purveyors of religious commodities. How often we hear men say, “I like this about that church. I do not like this.” Or, “I prefer this; I do not prefer that.” Or, “This church meets my needs; this one does not.” Is the church of our Savior, the bride for which he shed his blood, nothing but a smorgasbord, a buffet to gorge ourselves upon personally preferred programs and distinctives until we feel that we should find a new restaurant with better cuisine? Does Jesus Christ, our only Head and Savior, really care what we like, what I like? Is he working, blessing, sending his Spirit according to our self-indulgent, personal preference lists? Would he have us pick and choose a church like we do our shirts and hats? Would he have our commitment to a local congregation to be determined according to whim, preference, or comfort? Is his church nothing but another commodity, to be shaped, marketed, and packaged according to the desires of men? In such an environment, of course church membership will suffer, for loyalty, commitment to work through differences, and the duty of confrontation within the local body will be seen as interferences on my personal quest to find meaning rather than as the divinely ordained means to congregational growth, sanctification, and maturity.
Of course, Reformed-minded believers sometimes manifest deficiencies in their approach to church membership, albeit in slightly different directions. For us, the sin is an over particularity and hyper sensitivity concerning our doctrinal preferences, which we are absolutely persuaded are marks of a true church. If the mega and seeker-friendly oriented churches suffer from such a big tent mentality that the tent virtually looks like the world, Reformed believers sometimes often suffer from such narrowness that only three people can fit in the tent. This is not to downplay the doctrinal concerns of reformed believers; it is to give a caution that if fidelity to a local congregation is tied to maintaining “my list of one hundred core doctrines,” then we have possibly plunged over the cliff of perfectionism. Reformed believers with commonly held principles should not normally separate over differences of application, for we may very well be wrong in our preferred application. Even if we are right, the body of Christ as expressed in the local congregation will profit from Reformed believers with more biblically consistent practice. This is a difficult balance to maintain, admittedly, but our loyalty to the local body of Christ, assuming there are not egregious, apparently irreformable sins among the leadership or membership, must lead us not to further separation and division but to prayer, humble interaction with the leadership, and patience in waiting upon the Lord to reform further a particular congregation.
The Bible says, “Lean not upon your own understanding.” Too many of us are doing so with respect to church membership. Five centuries ago, we rejected one pope. Now, we have enthroned millions, each with his agenda, interpretation, and preferences. Rejecting this, each of us must hold our local church membership as our only legitimate claim to be part of the body of Christ, as Scripture everywhere teaches. Uphold it. Remain loyal to it. Work through differences that will always exist within the local body. See it as your duty to join yourself, formally and officially, to the best local expression of the body of Christ available and never to forsake the “assembling of yourselves together” within the church of God wherever you happen to live. Do these because the Head of the church, Jesus Christ, cares where your name is written. He treasures the local congregation. Do we? Or, due to personal selfishness, spiritual consumerism, and ignorance, do we downplay the importance of church membership – something useful if it suits us, something to ignore without much thought if it does not?