Remembering Membership - What do you think?

Last week I performed a wedding for a cute couple in my church. During the festivities I managed to speak to several friends of the couple that I had never met before. In our conversations I was asked a question in which I had no ‘on the spot’ answer.

The question was, Why do we need to become members of a church?

In other words, why do I have to make an official commitment? How official is the commitment to joining a church? Why isn’t it obvious that me showing up each week means I’m devoted?

I thought about this question and this was my immediate response.
I know for some people salvation only comes through the church and I respect that opinion. Baptist Heritage seems to carry more of a soul freedom response that suggests salvation is not through the church but through the individual. The church is the housing place for those individual souls. It is a place for souls to work together to become the hands and feet of Christ, to partner with God in the ‘ongoing creation of the world.'
I’m not satisfied with this answer because my gut tells me there is more to being members of the church. There is a commitment and there has to be a verbal response for why church is important.

I have thought about this conundrum all week. I am not sure how to word it but here is my new-and-improved, thought-through answer:
It seems to me that in joining a church you leave home and hometown to join a larger world. The whole world is your new neighborhood and all who dwell therein –black, white, yellow, red, stuffed and starving, smart and stupid, mighty and lowly, criminal and self-respecting, American or Russian – all become your sisters and brothers in the new family formed in Jesus. By joining a church you declare your individuality in the most radical way in order to affirm community on the widest possible scale. (This is paraphrased from several sources by Henri Nouwen, Frederick Buechner, and William Sloane Coffin)
This response to me is better. What do you think? Why is church membership important to you?

Comments

Adam Bean said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
August 7, 2009 at 1:13 PM
Adam Bean said…
Honestly, as I just recently realized, I have never "joined a church."

I was born into one, and grew up there for 18 years, but never did any act of declaring membership. In college I attended a handful of different churches at various periods, but never quite felt like doing the "student membership" thing. In grad school I have been attending one church the entire time, and have even filled small staff positions there, but have still never joined, and am technically not a "member." Originally I just didn't want to go up front again. Now I feel that I am deliberately resisting, since this church, progressive in many other respects, has an irksome "closed membership" policy where only those who were baptized in exactly the way we like it to be done are admitted. Sure, the like of those improperly (or, gasp, not at all) immersed are welcome to attend, commune, and serve, but they are not permitted membership. Thus I am reluctant to claim for myself what would be denied for others.

So yes, as a 24 year old seminary student, I have never joined a church, and am not sure if or when I will.
August 7, 2009 at 1:15 PM
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