“Why should I become a member of a local church?”

Over the years I’ve heard a number of well-intentioned and sincere objections follow this question:

Membership feels exclusive, like some people are in and some are out. This isn’t very hospitable.
Membership feels too institutional, like the church is a club and not a family.
Membership means requirements and obligations, which are anti-Gospel and anti-Grace.

It might surprise you to learn this, but I used to strongly agree with each one of these objections. However, over the years, my thinking has changed significantly and - rather than membership working against hospitality, family, and Gospel - I’ve become deeply convinced that membership actually facilitates each of these!

Here’s how:

1. Membership facilitates hospitality.

Luke 14:12-14. He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.”

In Christ’s teaching, we are specifically instructed to open our doors and invite in those who are on the outside. This passage is not just about inviting in the poor vs the rich (though it is also about that), it is about extending hospitality to outsiders vs insiders. Now, if - in the name of hospitality - we say there’s no such thing as insiders or outsiders, then who will do the inviting and who will come to the party? You cannot invite others into the hospitality of God until you, yourself have received the goodness of the Lord’s hospitality. You must be in before you can invite others in.

Once you are in, you realize there are others who are out - which puts you in the perfect situation to obey Jesus’ teaching on true hospitality. In this way, Membership (a formal and clear way of defining who is in and who is out), actually sets us up to obey the Lord, open our doors, and demonstrate real hospitality to others.

2. Membership makes the church more like a family.

1 Timothy 5:1-2. “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.”

This passage instructs us to treat other people in the church like family. Then, our author (the Apostle Paul) goes on to give specific instructions about who to care for, how to care for them, and how to discipline people when they stray into sin. The assumption is, you can only operate as a family when it is clear who, exactly, is a part of the family. Paul is clearly not instructing us to treat all people like fathers, monthers, brothers, and sisters - but rather the people who are a part of the church family. When such individuals stray into flagrant sin, they are (temporarily, and for the sake of encouraging repentance) removed from the church family. For this kind of familial love and discipline to work, there must be some sort of clear boundary line that delineates who is in the family and who is not.

Therefore, in order for the church to function like a family, we must know who, specifically, is a part of that family. The brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers here is not meant to signify some abstract concept of warm relationships - rather we should be thinking of specific people. i.e. my brother-in-Christ Jeromy or my father-in-Christ David. Membership helps take us from the abstract to the specific in being a church family.

3. Membership showcases the Gospel.

Ephesians 2:8-10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand, that we should walk in them.”

“But Membership means requirements and obligations, which are anti-Gospel and anti-Grace.” This is the one I hear most often. It is also the one to which I am, simultaneously, most sympathetic and which I disagree with the most strongly! I am sympathetic because it is absolutely true that the Gospel is the good news of the free gift of mercy and forgiveness won for us in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The Gospel is primarily about something God has done for us and not something that we do for God.

However, when we receive this free gift of mercy and forgiveness, we find that it changes absolutely everything about us. Our lives are no longer our own. We belong, body - mind - and soul - to the Lord. We begin to embody the good news of the Gospel, allowing it to shape our lives and affections.

Membership clarifies the implications of the Gospel for us and, therefore, showcases the beauty of the Gospel in the transformed lives of the members. If we resist Membership on the grounds that “the Gospel is not about doing stuff,” we are saying that the church is not have any vision for what a redeemed and renewed life in Christ should look like. A quick, cursory reading of just about any New Testament book should quickly lay that objection to rest.

Dear friends, on February 9, 2020 - our Bishop (the Rt. Rev. John Guernsey) will visit Redeemer to confirm and welcome in new members. I want to warmly and joyfully extend the invitation to membership to absolutely all of you!

There is a simple, three-session, course to prepare you for this next step - we call it Redeemer 101 | Foundations. The goal is simply to orient you to the Gospel, the Anglican Communion, and the local vision for Redeemer.

If you have not yet taken this course, let me just say that it is a really good way to get to know our church better and discern if you’d like to become a Member.

If you have any questions about what it means to be a Member at Redeemer, or about the Membership process, please reach out to me - dan@redeemerva.org

In the Father’s love,

Dan