I’m on vacation this week, but through the magic of Scheduled Posts, I bring you something I wrote on the 16th!!!

I recently read John Piper’s analysis of the Importance of Church Membership, and I think he makes some good points. I just think his overall premise is wrong. It’s natural that it should be wrong, given that the modern phenomenon of “a church of every flavor in every city” didn’t exist in the New Testament, so any apparently pro-church-membership arguments found there must be weighed against what they meant in their original context.

For a summary of Piper’s views, there’s a good synopsis here.

Basically, it boils down to the fact that we need church membership in order for the “members” of the local church to be properly discipled and disciplined.

Rubbish. Yes, we need accountability. But it strikes me that this emphasis on “membership” in a local church denies the membership of ALL CHRISTIANS in the Universal Church.

The notion that Paul’s comparison of the church to a body implies membership in a local body is just ridiculous, in my opinion. To me, that’s rewriting Paul. The more we subdivide the church, the less like a body it looks.

Paul vehemently denied that the church even could be divided.

1 Corinthians 1:10-13 (NET):

10 I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree together, to end your divisions, and to be united by the same mind and purpose. 11 For members of Chloe’s household have made it clear to me, my brothers and sisters, that there are quarrels among you. 12 Now I mean this, that each of you is saying, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” or “I am with Cephas,” or “I am with Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Paul wasn’t crucified for you, was he? Or were you in fact baptized in the name of Paul?

In other words, if you were in Corinth and a believer, you were a member of that church. More than that, you were a member of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I submit myself to my local congregation, but I feel no pull to attending the membership class. I participate in worship and fellowship and volunteer my time in that body. Do I need some recognized membership? Would anyone in the congregation, seeing me up there holding a microphone, think I wasn’t a member because I haven’t taken the membership class? How many people take that class and then leave the church, or at least live lives that deny their membership? Yes, the church should be there to discipline them in those cases.  But it should also be there to discipline me if I go astray, member or not.

To me, we either agree with the Catholics that the Church is a monolith and has a visible organization, or we realize that the Church is an invisible entity otherwise known as the Kingdom of God. But what we cannot do is call the Church an invisible entity with a bunch of separate bodies with no connections to each other. Insisting on local church membership seems to be just that.

Now, for a bit of sanity, let me say that the idea of a church membership class is not a bad one. It’s a good idea, particularly for those new to the church or Christianity, to have a vehicle for expressing the basics of Christianity or the distinctives of the particular body. But I’d also submit that if someone attending the church can’t get that information by attending for a few months, the local church isn’t doing its job.

Maybe I’m way off here, and maybe I’ve misunderstood Piper.  Feel free to offer correction.

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