By Cody Sanders, Deacon
Is church membership biblical? Well that’s a complicated topic. Membership as we know it (not referring to a church) comes with a lot of negative connotations, stemming from personal experiences in our modern society. We see fees, fine print, and a lot of catches as we feel the effects of worldly memberships of things.
However, the Bible lays it out differently. We see a term repeated, the “Flock”. A flock of sheep was a common term to describe the groups of believers in the New testament. Now, a shepherd in the bible is charged with a responsibility to “Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you.” How would you know who is in that flock unless it was a group of believers who identified themselves with a certain flock, or in better terms, a church?
This can be divulged into a variety of issues, concerning pain from previous experiences with a prior church, or a pre-supposition to joining a specific church vs being in the “universal church” of believers as seen in 1 Corinthians 12:13.
As a believer but still a sinner saved by grace, we are still in a sanctification process as we are being saved and still struggling with the flesh. By ourselves, we are isolated from the other parts of the body of Christ, as Paul states “But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part!” We are encouraged to join with the body of Christ in a church, or in a simpler sense, a certain group of believers that is established near you that you have access to, so that “there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together”
This does imply however, that there is a sense of “residency” with a group of believers, as you make a commitment to join with them and as you reside under the leadership of that flock’s elders and pastors that oversee them, as seen in Hebrews 13:17. This allows a believer to have a community to have fellowship with and a way of accountability as we all grow in Christ, as seen in Matthew 18: 15-17
On a final note, membership as we see in our modern society is not the same as the kind we see in the bible. It isn’t called that, nor is it made plain anywhere. Rather, we see numerous times as we encounter Paul’s epistles to the churches in Corinth, Ephesus, etc. that there are established groups of believers as well as overseers to help discipline them and to help them grow in Christ as a church. Desiring God has a good way to summarize the points made here, stating: “The New Testament teaching about church government and church discipline would be meaningless if some form of commitment to mutual accountability in a body of believers were not expected.”