Why Membership?
(Over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing blog posts written by City Church staff, leadership, and members on the topic of church membership. Harrison kicks us off here.)
At City Church we believe that every Christian should be a member of a church. This isn’t peculiar to us but has been the normative practice of Christians since the beginning of the church. So why exactly do we believe this? There are many reasons, but here are a few.
It’s biblical. The letters of the New Testament assume that Christians are members of a local church. The authors address the letters to local churches and discuss issues such as pastoral care, conduct in worship services, and how to discipline the unrepentant and restore to full fellowship the repentant. None of these things would make sense unless there was a level of formal commitment among the believers addressed.
It’s consistent with our understanding of salvation. We are saved by being united to Christ through faith. This is what the apostle Paul is getting at when he frequently writes about our being in Christ. Being united to Christ, then, we also share a mystical union with other believers. This is why Paul describes the church as the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12). It is made up of many members—hands, legs, feet, etc.— but they are all vitally joined to the head, which is Jesus. This is also why Revelation describes redemptive history as climaxing in a wedding in which Jesus is forever united to his bride, the church (Revelation 19).
“It isn’t good to be alone.” That is what God said in response to Adam’s being alone in the garden of Eden, but that is also the essence of how Scripture describes the Christian life. This is famously seen in the many “one another” passages of the New Testament: love one another (John 13:34), be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10), encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and so on. Radical independence is the heart of sin, so the Christian life is supposed to be one of ever-greater dependance and embodied commitment to other Jesus-followers.
The church is the place to use your spiritual gifts. Every believer has gifts that God has given them to use to extend his blessing to the world. In the New Testament, discussion of these spiritual gifts is always connected to discussions about the church (1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4). This tells us that the proper avenue for you to exercise and hone your spiritual gifts are in and through a local body of believers.
If you follow Jesus but aren’t yet a member of a church, let me invite you to take a step of obedience to God in finding a church home. I think City Church is a great place to do that, but we also believe in the catholicity of the Kingdom of God—there are many in Richmond that are worthy of your consideration!