Recently I was asked by a fellow pastor to comment on the importance of "Membership." What follows are a few quick thoughts:
"Membership" doesn't really seem to be an important thing to many people nowadays. There actually might be some good reasons rooted in the past as to why such a concept has been all but lost. I suspect that the formalism of membership in the mainline churches has left many thinking that if someone can have their name on a roster somewhere but never attend or live according to what that name on the roster symbolizes then it is all pointless -- even a ruse. And if that is all membership is then they would have a pretty valid point. Most see membership as just a one-way street -- my commitment to the church. Added to the confusion is a membership process that could feel more like jumping through hoops or meeting a theological checklist in order to join a club than it does discipleship and relationship. Sure -- the church membership records are not the same as the list of Names in Heaven, but to ignore the importance of what happens in "membership" is to miss some of the central points of the call to discipleship.
I believe that a healthier view of membership is rooted in the Scriptural call to proclamation/profession/confession of faith and also to the relational picture that Scriptures give to us of the Body of Christ. We have so individualized faith in North America that we have forgotten that the Scriptures rarely, if ever, talk about the practice of faith as an "I" but most always as a "We". Faith is a relationship - but not just a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We always live out our relationship with Jesus Christ through relationship within the Body of Christ. Membership, therefore, is simply a recognition that we are called by the Holy Spirit to live in Christ as a part of the Body of Christ -- and the localized/particular part of the Body of Christ to which people relate is a local "congregation" - a "community" of faith.
The shared "faith" is a reflection of the grace of God through Christ and a reflected "confession" of what God has spoken through His Holy Word. This is why Lutherans, in the historical and the classical Lutheran context, have never seen themselves as a "church" but simply as a "confession of the Christian Church." All of this is to conclude that to whatever extent the concept of "membership" is seen as simply a set of hoops to jump through in order to fill out a roster or satisfy an outside demand it will be weak and unhealthy. To whatever extent the concept of "membership" is viewed as a confessed and living relationship with Jesus Christ and His bride the local church -- the local Body of Christ -- it will be powerfully healthy.
In Christ,
Pastor David Dressler
