Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus (Building Healthy Churches)

The 9 Marks Series brings us a great little book by Jonathan Leeman dealing with the issue of Church Membership. In today's culture most people don't want to "commit" to much of anything. As a matter of fact church "membership" is on the decline in all denominations. It is not that necessarily because attendance is dropping, but membership is dropping. People are not as committed to denominational ties nor are they as committed to a local body of believers as they should be. Why is that?I think part of the issue is that they don't want to commit because then the local body of believers will hold them "accountable" for their walk with Christ. The second issue is, if I become a member then they are going to ask me to get more involved on a church board, while maybe true, that is not the only reason to become a church member.The picture of membership is a bigger picture than most Christians today realize. It is affirming your belief in the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior and committing yourself to a local body of believers for growth, nurture, accountability and discipleship. There are many Biblical reasons for membership and Leeman does a good job of bringing those together and pointing them out for those who are attending a local church.I believe that every Christian, either layman or professional clergy will benefit from reading through this short book. Don't let church membership be a stumbling block for attending consistently a local church, instead read through this work, pray about it and come to realize why it is for your benefit and the benefit of the larger Body of Christ for you to become a "church Member".Enjoy!

Leeman explains church membership from the scriptures. He does so in a way that is tactfully simple, yet deeply rooted ancient truths.

My initial reaction to the title/subtitle of this book was pretty negative and theologically snooty. "Isn't the world supposed to know who the church is because of our love? (Jn13:35)" Well, that's true, but not mutually exclusive to belonging to the Church, even formally.I want to give some testimony here to an effective tool our church has begun to use. We recently formalized membership at our church, a move that I am emphatically for as a pastor. This book pinpointed a lot of reasons to support this move which I was already seeing intuitively. Here are some of the items this movement is helping us grapple with as a congregation:- How do we enforce church discipline when the need arises?- Can we have any impact on the hypocrisy of people in our midst who profess Jesus with their mouth but their hearts are undeniably far from him?- How do we be clear about the expectations of what it means to be a part of our church, and thereby draw people into defined discipleship?- How is it that someone could disavow our most central values (like belief in Jesus as the Savior and son of God) but be a "member" of our church simply by attending it?There are a variety of Scriptures that point to the need for a church to have an answer to these issues and as this book points out, church membership, while in and of itself is not a biblical mandate, is a functional construct by which we are able to carry out many biblical mandates that need some kind of "cutting board" to hold our issues against and deal with them. Membership has traditionally been an abused tradition, and churches have absolutely committed the crime of bludgeoning people with "belonging" as a measure to stroke their own egos as church leaders. Just don't judge a philosophy by its abusers.And, don't judge the book by it's cover (if that's what is turning you off.) Perhaps not everyone needs to read this, but if your church has need to consider formalizing membership, this will be a helpful tool for you. And if you're frustrated that churches formalize membership, I think actually reading this might give some insight to the values we're trying to pursue by setting a clear path in front of our congregations as to what it looks like to follow Jesus here.

I cannot recall the amount of times I have heard the question. Where do you find church membership in the Bible? Is membership Biblical? Jonathan Leeman has done an excellent job in answering these questions. It is an easy read and easy to get through. This book explains the very basic concepts of church and the basics every believer should understand of the authority of our Lord Jesus, Savior & King. It's more about citizenship than membership.We are in an age where we have seen corruption and scandal in every level of authority throughout the church and the world system. This has created a distrust of any authority and only reinforces our ideas that no one looks out for me but myself and that I deserve everything I can wish for myself.This mindset has altered our Christianity into a religion that revolves around the individual, where I become the final authority of my religion. I decide what the Holy Spirit is saying to me and this supersedes all other revelation. This is the age of lawlessness.Read if you dare to. It will require either submission to or rejection of the very authority of Christ.