February 01, 2007
Join the Club
It will be interesting to see how the new ‘club’ structure really works in our church. I’ve got more questions than answers when it comes to having to renew your membership each year. Will everyone have the same renewal date, or will notification be sent to members telling them their membership is about to expire? Is there going to be a 30-day grace period for those who are out of town or unavailable? Will there be a special dispensation for people who are residents only six months out of the year? Can shut-ins and nursing home patients use a proxy? How will pastors and elders know from one year to another whether or not you’re a member? Do you suppose this is the way the man got into the wedding banquet without wearing the proper wedding clothes? (Matt 22:11-14 NIV)
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Gail;
----You ask good and relevant questions, but don’t you realize, these questions are taboo among the club members? Maybe your membership slip will need to be cancelled because you have shown that you have not been studying!
----But since you have kicked the questions out into the greater non-owned halls of the public arena, and since I joyfully do not have such a membership slip to be torn up and disposed by them, please allow me to muse a bit about your questions.
----I am sure everyone will have different renewal dates for their club memberships. That’s the way it is with magazines and such. But rather than your membership ending on the last day of the month in which it was entered, it will probably end on the particular day of the month that you first subscribed. You see, it can not bee too easy, because with all of those hundreds and hundreds of subscribers ready to serve (commitment #5) they would run out of things to do if not for the required maintenance of a complex subscription system.
----As for a grace period, did you see anything on the commitment slip concerning the reception of grace? Forget that! The commitment was for surrender and submission. What do you mean grace! Your really out-a-limb here, Gail! Now go do more studying.
----Of course there will be special dispensation for less than one year residents. Usually, these are professional types, highly skilled in narrow market niches that pay big compensation! They can certainly participate in the sacrificial giving commitment. These are usually pretty insightful folk too, so they will need to be moving on before they will be catching on.
----Shut-ins? Nursing home patients? Proxy? I…I don’t understand. I thought that the club was not for the benefit of the member-subscribers. What can these people do except require service? But then, on the other hand they can still surrender and submit. There may be some value in that, but probably not enough. Don’t count on proxies.
----The pastors and elders will always know your subscription is current by the line-towing expressions of surrender and submission upon your face when they shake your hand. If a handshake does not bring said expressions, they will shake your billfold. If that fails to cause surrendering submissive expressions, they will assume your subscription has expired and act sheepish.
----As fun as it is to see the absurdity in the ambiguities of the new bylaws and these membership commitment slips, I do not for an instant fail to see the zeal and ambition in the hearts of your leaders for their church. To have some big, booming, emotionally vibrant (if not spiritually discerning) church in the community is important in these times of severe spiritual brushfires. I think your leaders are right in figuring that there are a lot of people who would come to such a church only if it were emotionally scintillating . But they would never give a reverent church the time of day. I think there needs to be a church home for such people, for there are getting to be so many of them. I believe that the leaders of XXC will do a very good job of making XXC into that kind of church. We are all imperfect enough to find beneficial spiritual life within whatever mess man tries to serve it, be it traditional or clubhouse.
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