Some thoughts on Church Membership

There is no biblical support for the idea of church membership and church membership rolls. The scriptural model is along the lines of this: those regularly attending the public assembly and worshipping with the saints are de facto members of that local church.

Now, there are many practical and even legal reasons for maintaining an official membership roll, and so every church in the 21^stcentury needs to do so. If nothing else, the insurance company will probably demand it and perhaps the local government as well.

So join your local church as an official "on-the-roll" member when you are ready, but do it eyes-wide-open for those practical reasons, not theological reasons. Because there are none of the latter.

Elders and pastors should tell people that they would like them to consider becoming members for these practical reasons. We’re adults; we grasp the concept. 

Church leadership should not present theological reasons for “official church membership.” Whatever reasons they give are bogus. Some may tell you that there is evidence that the early church kept official memberships. That is interesting and also largely irrelevant. When someone tells you something the early church did, receive it as fascinating history. Evaluate it if you will.  But do not consider that the early church was somehow more “with it” than the modern church. That may be true, but if so it is not because it was “early”, that would just be a coincidence. Some of the earliest early churches (e.g. Corinth) were models of churches with severe problems and bad practices, not exemplary ones. Besides, anyone (that means anyone)  who says that we should  do this because the early church did it (or, similarly, the churches of the Reformation did it) is 100% guaranteed a cherry-picker. Dollars to donuts, as an example, that anyone using the reason “the early church did this” will conveniently forget many other things that the early church practiced. For a rather trivial example, the Didache called for cold water baptism.

And there should not be more than a cursory inquiry of potential members. There are no “convince us you are sincere and surpass some ill-defined human-invented threshold of knowledge”  barriers to fellowship on display in the bible. Besides, no elder or pastor actually has some special gift of discernment when it comes to the sincerity of the potential congregant. There are no  data that show that those who display great sincerity (on some private, subjective sincerity scale) and/or those coming with great knowledge will have, on average, a better Christian walk. If someone expresses the desire and has a minimal grasp  of the gospel, take them. Welcome them. Here is a practical question: would  you rather answer God as to why you mistakenly allowed a non-Christian into the local church, or have to answer as to why you excluded a true believer?

Related to all this is the nonsensical idea of a church covenant. Do not sign one. (I won’t, ever again.) As nice as they sound, they are not worth the paper they are written on. You are either a member in good standing, serving in the local body, struggling daily with your sanctification, availing yourself of the ordinary means of grace, or you are not. Signing a covenant (no such thing in the bible, of course) has nothing to do  with the state of  your walk. It is a well-meaning but ultimately worthless "let's feel good about ourselves" gesture.