Is Official Or Formal Church Membership In A Local Church According To Scripture – Part 2 Series

IS OFFICIAL OR FORMAL CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN A LOCAL CHURCH ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE – PART 2

In Part 1 we looked at the practice some churches have of there being an official local church membership that divides “members”, adherents and attendees into “MEMBERS” and “NON-MEMBERS” depending if one has been interviewed, and the name submitted to a Church Meeting, for a vote on acceptance. Then that person has rights others do not have, even though all born again Christians are members of the Body of Christ with equal right in the Lord’s sight.

We have been looking as Paul’s writings and the practice in the very first church at Jerusalem. Now we continue with more examples from Paul’s letters.

I wish to restate that my aim in doing this is not to cause trouble in any church, but I do call on you to examine this practice of there being official/formal members while discriminating against those who are not, as if they are inferior.

I knew of a church where a minister was sent “to turn the church around” and he spent most of his time in sermons on Membership and Constitutions. What about the Christian life, and progressing in Christ? Is not that what we are about?

[4]. THE CORINTHIAN AND ROMAN CHURCH –

{{1 Corinthians 1:10 “Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, THAT YOU ALL AGREE, and THERE BE NO DIVISIONS AMONG YOU, but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.”}}

When you have a two-tiered group in a church you immediately have a division. I don’t mean a nasty division, or a bitter one, but a division nevertheless. Paul urged all in Corinth to agree and to do that everyone there had to be on the same level; on the same platform as members of the Body. Corinth had many divisions as we well know, but official church membership was not one of them because it did not exist to become a division. Instead they made another division – Paul, Apollos, Cephas.

{{Romans 16:17 “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those WHO CAUSE DISSENSIONS AND HINDRANCES contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.”}}

I am suggesting that dividing people into official members with rights, and all the rest with no rights is causing a division. It is also putting a hindrance before a man or woman who wishes fellowship in Christ but does not wish to part of a man-made invention. You are then wounding the conscience of that one.

The local church is NOT like Club – Yacht Club, or Special Golf Club, Country Club, where a person submits his/her name for membership that then has to be voted on, or deliberated on. It then becomes a badge of honour when a person is accepted. Thank God, I am accepted in the beloved and Christ added me to the Church when I was saved. Anything apart from that is not scriptural.

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[5]. TWO MORE CORINTHIAN VERSES:-

{{1 Corinthians 6:15 “Do you not know that YOUR BODIES ARE MEMBERS OF CHRIST? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be!”}}

This verse belongs to a passage where Paul is teaching about things that are lawful but not necessarily profitable. He says that all things are lawful for him but he will not be mastered by anything. He then gives a number of examples, concluding in verse 15 with the passage that our bodies are members of Christ and that they should not be taken from there and made members of a harlot.

By harlot, he means placing our membership of the body of Christ in another area and our association with something that would not do honour to our membership in the body of Christ. In my way of thinking we have an extremely precious membership - that is a full membership in the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to take that membership lightly and impose rules and regulations of another membership, in my way of thinking, is placing ourselves in an association which is not the one that we should hold dearly to. I think to do that is to miss the understanding of the true value of the Church, or if you like, the preciousness of the Bride. Some may think I am making a great deal out of nothing, but why impose something not in the New Testament churches on believers?

The majority goes along with it because hardly anyone examines it.

{{1 Corinthians 12:12-14 “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. (13) For BY ONE SPIRIT WE WERE ALL BAPTISED INTO ONE BODY, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (14) FOR THE BODY IS NOT ONE MEMBER, BUT MANY.”}}