The Importance of Church Membership

Is there a difference between ATTENDING a church regularly and JOINING a church?  I believe there is.  Absolutely. Is there a difference between going with someone and marrying them? Absolutely.  The difference is vast and vital and valuable.

Church is thoroughly biblical.  We live in a world of evangelicalism where church is downgraded, devalued and downplayed.  Shame on us.  Many modern Christians are spectators of Christianity rather than participants.

• They get their teaching from their favourite Christian celebrity through their iPad or from Christian events
• They find worship communicated to them through Christian media.
• They bounce from event to event, from website to website.
• They don’t want regular commitment or accountability.
• They ignore the ordinances of communion and baptism despite the clear command of God to do so.
• They do not want to be accountable or disciplined or challenged.
• They want the church to be there when they need it but they consider the latest Christian “big thing” as far more valuable than the faithful local church pastor who is trying to build the church in his locality

Many churches therefore have given up trying to enforce membership.  They no longer require it nor ask for it, they have given up on any biblical notion of challenging people to believe and belong;  to gather together as part of the local church.  We have often heard the phrase “a personal relationship” with Jesus Christ – far more biblical is the idea of 'a corporate relationship with Jesus Christ'.  He is the head of the church!  Paul wrote most of his letters to 'churches'.  They knew their members, they knew their names and their struggles.  In certain circumstances they were urged to put people out of the church.  How could they do that if they didn’t know who was in?  Membership is necessary.  The NT knows nothing of the idea of a Christina who has less than full commitment to the church.  Did Christ give less than full commitment to the church?  Are you threatened by the idea of church membership?  Why?  Because of hidden sin that might be exposed?  Because of how you might be challenged to serve or give?  Are these things really threats?  Should they not be joy?  Are you concerned that you might have to give up some independence?  That you might actually have to commit to turn up at 11 on a Sunday or to a prayer meeting when you would rather just 'make up your own mind' how to spend your time.  Isn't that just nonsense?

Here are a few (just a few) of the many, many benefits from church membership.  

You.....

• Learn to live with other believers in community
• Learn how to handle conflict in a biblical way
• Find opportunities to serve and exercise gifts
• Avail of the ordinances of baptism and membership
• Have people to hold you accountable
• Learn to be faithful, disciplined
• Be part of a spiritual family
• Receive spiritual benefit from others
• Have authority figures in your life
• Have spiritual caretakers
• Receive solid teaching in a crazy world

This is an obedience issue, a fellowship issue, an authority issue, an identity issue

Do you want to be known as a Christian?  A member of the body?  A fellow believer with others?

Get into membership – you cant just keep on “going out” for ever

Our Daily Bread

We all learnt the Lord’s Prayer as children and probably have fond (or otherwise) memories of school assemblies where we recited it ad nauseum.  For that reason some of its rich meaning has been lost in over-familiarity and sense of “well we know what it’s all about.”

But as we‘ve been unpacking it recently in our evening series, it has had renewed force in my life.  It starts with God. All our praying and all our lives should derive their main focus from Him - His glory, His name, His kingdom  - and yet how often are we all about the great god “Me” rather than the great God who is in heaven!

And it moves to us in our great moral needs of forgiveness, deliverance from temptation and evil. And in the middle?  The only statement in the whole prayer about material provision - “Give us this day our daily bread” – more of a recognition of the Giver than a request for something to be given.  It points us to the SOURCE of all things - God.  It reminds us of the SUBSTANCE we need – bread, not the luxuries but the basics.  It reminds us of the SEEKERS – us, for we are part of a community and it grounds us in the SCHEDULE God works to - ‘daily’.

But the word Jesus uses for “daily” is an interesting one.  It is “epiousious” and is only used here and in Luke 11 v3, which is Luke’s parallel record of the same model prayer.  It is difficult to pin down the exact meaning but it is wider than we might think.  The idea is that not only do we ask for bread for today but every day going forward.  This is a prayer for continual provision which frees us from greed, self-sufficiency, selfishness and ongoing worry and stress.

I’m constantly challenged about how to live a contented life in a mad, materialistic society. Surely one of the ways is to get a God-perspective on our lives, to have gratitude, which comes from contentment, which comes from peace, which comes from living each day close to the Father’s heart and recognising the one who is the Bread of Life.  It’s tough but well worth the daily battle to realise that it’s bread alone we need. Everything else is a big bonus!!