Service clubs and organizations have membership applications, but I just can’t wrap my head around a church membership application. I recently read a Membership Application for one of our local churches which states that after completing the form the applicant will be contacted “to set up a pre-membership interview (usually within 2-3 weeks). Subject to the interview, your membership will be voted on for approval at the next scheduled membership meeting.” What ever happened to going forward during an invitation, accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and being baptized? In the time it took to confess Christ, put on a baptismal robe, go into the baptistery, you were welcomed into the Family of God. I just can’t hear Jesus saying, “After your interview, in two or three weeks – Follow Me”. Nor can I imagine Paul telling the Gentiles the Jews would be voting on their membership. I understand why churches want to quantify their membership; I’m just not convinced it’s complementary to New Testament evangelism.
1 comment:
April 06, 2007
Quantified
Service clubs and organizations have membership applications, but I just can’t wrap my head around a church membership application. I recently read a Membership Application for one of our local churches which states that after completing the form the applicant will be contacted “to set up a pre-membership interview (usually within 2-3 weeks). Subject to the interview, your membership will be voted on for approval at the next scheduled membership meeting.” What ever happened to going forward during an invitation, accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and being baptized? In the time it took to confess Christ, put on a baptismal robe, go into the baptistery, you were welcomed into the Family of God. I just can’t hear Jesus saying, “After your interview, in two or three weeks – Follow Me”. Nor can I imagine Paul telling the Gentiles the Jews would be voting on their membership. I understand why churches want to quantify their membership; I’m just not convinced it’s complementary to New Testament evangelism.
Gail;
-----If I owned a restaurant or started a social club, if everything invested in it was from my contribution, then I certainly would have ownership rights. Among those rights would be one by which I could set parameters and expectations upon those who desire to patronize my operation. If you don’t live up to my parameters you don’t participate, simple and sure. It is easy to see who owns the club by who sets and polices the parameters.
-----As far as the church goes, there is not a hint in the Bible of any man’s ownership of the church. There is no hint of any group’s ownership of the church. Yet almost every church around has parameters set for membership and participation purposes. With our mouths then, we profess the Lord’s ownership and control over the church. But by our practice we reveal that in truth we own and control the church. We are left shamefully exposed in our own deceit.
-----Could it be different? Should it be? Every now and then I get to converse with one of these geniuses who knows that all religions lead to God like all spokes lead to a hub. Would it be a good thing for the church to stock up on those kind? Should the church be left open to shelving an endless supply of gays, dubie tokers, or sleep-arounds? The Bible warns us not to associate with these kinds who also call themselves Christian. And it tells us to hold fast to the doctrine which the apostles taught. So finding the sweet line of parameters between leaving the church door open to anything and closing it down to many truly good Christians who merely think different should be the key to our own genuine profession of whose church it is.
-----Personally, I believe that anything taken beyond what the Bible itself expressly teaches is not for imposition upon another. Paul tells us not to go beyond what is written. But, in many ways, we must go beyond what is written for knowledge to be complete. Then, any idea existing beyond definitive Biblical expression can only be for the personal relationship between self and the Lord. I do not even try to impress my ideas upon my wife or children as “have-to-be’s.” I believe the Bible explicitly lays out enough parameters to define a church which the Holy Spirit can well control, but not enough to define a church that man can control. Of course, then, we’re going to have to finish those parameters. We all can be sure about our own holy spirit, but certainly not about each other’s!
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