April 09, 2007
Need to Know
On a church membership application under ‘personal information’ two of the questions asked were to name your previously attended church and your reason for leaving. It’s an easy answer if you left a church because you were relocating to another community. However, people often change churches in the same town and for a variety of reasons such as conflicts, sexual immorality or wayward teaching. While those reasons might come up in an informal conversation with others, I doubt anyone would state their reasons honestly in writing. My question is why does a prospective church need to know your reason for leaving a previous church and how is it pertinent to placing membership? This type of inquiry is something I’d expect to hear in a premarital counseling session like, “Why did you divorce you first husband?”
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3 comments:
I don't think that such questions are quite so sinister as your blog infers. But to make it more serious, the reasons that people left a former church could have been because they were asked to leave because of divisive behavior that wasn't scripturally legitimate. For a church to know this at application would give the leadership a chance to ask if repentance has occured.
Just a thought, dear friend.
Windypenguin-rlh,
Interesting thoughts. Let's say a person did in fact have something in their past(don't we all!), they've repented and found forgiveness. Is it then necessary to write it down and have the leadership sit in judgment on that repentenance?
Windypenguin-RLH and Gail;
-----Maybe the point here is less what has been done in the person’s past and more what is being expected of the person? What does scripture expect of the person in order for him to become a body part? And since it is Jesus Christ’s body, and since the person may or may not be Jesus Christ’s brother, whose place is it to determine his fit into the body? Yours? Mine? The Pastor’s? Can any of us really tell what is divisive behavior and which behavior on which side of a division is itself responsible for that division? How often does the child reject the medicine because of its bitterness or sting?
-----The first person to step up to the plate and defend membership criteria/membership questioneers had better have a thorough knowledge of the Word of God with a major in I Corinthians 3:10-15; 4:6; 8:1-3; 12:22-25; Romans 14:1, 4, 13, 17, 21; 15:1-2, 7; Galatians 5:13-15; 6:1, 3; Luke 18:10-14; Gal 6:5; Col 2:8, 16, 18-19, 22-23; I Pet 5:3, 6; I John 3:18-19; Rom 12:3; Ecclesiastes 3:12-13; Micah 6:8; Col 3:12-15. And that is just the tip of the iceberg! One of the most fundamental themes of the Word of God is that the relationship each of us has with God is unique and stands or falls on its own. Another important subtlety that is interwoven throughout the Scripture is that we are all unimaginably different from each other in the things we understand and the ways in which we understand them. Then we are given a few terse commands to leave each other’s consciences alone! For it is Christ who is the Head of each one of us. Since my access to God is straight through Him, not through you or anyone else (Hebrews), then Christ is the Head of the Church through His headship of each child. So who then has the right to make membership criteria that are in any slightest way beyond the simple criteria that the Word of God itself makes for each child that Christ has called into the body. You may dare, and God have mercy. But I will not dare!
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