Church Membership

Of late it God has burdened my heart regarding church membership. It is not unusual to find a difference in a church’s membership number and the number of those that are active within the church. Let me explain my view of active. . . An active member of a church is someone that is at each of the services the church has (given there will be times that you miss occasionally) and they are serving within the body of the church. With that said let me tell you some statics from the Southern Baptist Convention. Ready? The typical Southern Baptist Church has 233 members and 70 attending a Sunday morning service.

What does this mean? It’s obvious with that static in mind that church membership is no longer looked at as a responsibility or a testimony to unbelievers. Sadly, too many churches today have membership rolls where over half of those members have not attended regularly in years.

I spoke of membership being a responsibility. . . We are commanded in Scripture to be an active part of the body of Christ. Hebrews 10:25 says "we are not to forsake our own assembling together." Yet we have allowed it to happen. We have not sought after these names on our membership list that aren’t assembling with us. We have just brushed it off or under the rug. Then we wonder why the body isn’t functioning the way God intended. 1 Corinthians 12:14 tells us that the body is not one member but many. Verses following describes how the body functions, how God placed each member in the body as He has desired. To me that says every member of the body (the church) has a place within it. Yet how can the body function properly if each member isn’t present? As a member of a church we have a responsibility.

Church Membership is also a testimony to unbelievers. When we as a congregation welcome a new member into our body we are testifying of their salvation. Yet, how can we testify of someone’s salvation if they have not been a part of that body. How can we attest that they are faithfully running race Christ has set before them? How are we as the active part of the body caring for, suffering with, rejoicing with that part of the body that is not present?

I don’t pretend to have the answers about how to make people take church membership seriously, however I do pray that church membership would come to mean something more than it currently does. I pray that we would have a biblical understanding of church membership and practice it in our churches across the land.