Redeemer Family,
On Sunday, November 12th, we have the joyful opportunity for many of you to be Confirmed by our Bishop and welcomed as new Members into the Parish. This is a wonderful event that takes place only twice a year! Since this process is new to many of you, I thought I’d take a moment this afternoon to share a few details about what it means to take this important step in your faith.
ACTION ITEMS
(*Prerequisite: Take the Foundations Class)
Step 1: Register here to become a member on November 12.
Step 2: Fill out the membership and pledge form here.
Step 3: Sign up for a pre-membership interview with Lane Cowin or Oldson Duclos.
Step 4: Arrive 30 minutes early to one of the services on November 12.
Step 5: Participate in the Confirmation & Membership service on November 12.
Step 6: Throw a party with friends and family!
If you are ready to become a member, just follow the steps above and you’re good to go! If you are still on the fence or if you have questions, keep reading!
What is Confirmation? We see the practice of Confirmation in Scripture: the Apostles prayed for, and laid their hands on those who had already been baptized (2 Timothy 1:6-7; Acts 8:14-17; 19:6). In the Anglican practice of Confirmation, God, through the Bishop’s prayer and laying on of hands for daily increase in the Holy Spirit, strengthens the believer for Christian life in the service of Christ and his kingdom. Grace is God’s gift, and we pray that he will pour out his Holy Spirit on those who have already been made his children by adoption and grace in Baptism.
So What is Membership? We see the practice of church membership as the practical, local application of Confirmation. The Bible knows of no such creature as a Christian who is not participating in a local church. The church is the body of Christ, and so another way to say this would be that there is no such thing as a disembodied Christian! So when we stand up to take Christian vows and receive prayer from the Bishop, the very next thing we do is join the local church - saying to ourselves and each other, “I will live out these vows in this place with these people.”
How is Confirmation different from Membership?
Confirmation is about joining The Church (global) publicly as a Christian. The confirmation vows are Comprehensive-Christian, not Redeemer-specific.
Membership is about joining a local church (local) as a participant. The membership covenant is Redeemer-specific, not Comprehensive-Christian.
Summary: We recognize that following Jesus has never been and never will be a solo endeavor. We are not meant for individualized lives of faith. Rather, we acknowledge that we are meant to dwell with God and with one another in love and to invite others into a community of love. For this we will need the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We will also need each other. Confirmation is about making our faith public and communal - expressing our desire to live out what it means to be the church together.
Objection: OK, I hear you, but I actually have some issues with the idea of Church Membership
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:
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.
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, 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, mothers, 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.
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 to 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.
ACTION ITEMS
(*Prerequisite: Take the Foundations Class)
Step 1: Register here to become a member on November 12.
Step 2: Fill out the membership and pledge form here.
Step 3: Sign up for a pre-membership interview here.
Step 4: Arrive 30 minutes early to one of the services on November 12.
Step 5: Participate in the Confirmation & Membership service on November 12.
Step 6: Throw a party with friends and family!
Redeemer family, I’m looking forward to welcoming new people into our family on Sunday November 12. If you are already a member, please pause and say a prayer for those who are discerning confirmation and membership this fall.
In the Father’s love,
