If you’re looking for some more practical resources on church membership, here are a few suggestions.

First, check out our “Answers for Pastors” on membership. Here you’ll find quick answers to questions such as:

Years ago I attended a Sunday night service at one of the largest and most prestigious evangelical churches in Southern California. Attendance in the evenings had begun to wane in recent years, so a more informal approach was being tested. The college pastor was leading the service. After the opening exercises he had us all stand, turn 90 degrees, and give the person next to us a standing back massage.

One practical challenge that we as pastors face is how to encourage a church attender toward active church membership. How should we help individuals understand the necessity and joy of belonging to a local assembly of believers?

SIX SUGGESTIONS FOR MOVING PEOPLE FROM ATTENDER TO MEMBER

Here are six suggestions. The first four aim at creating an environment where membership is valued and understood. The last two involve caring for specific individuals who need to make the transition from simply attending to active membership.

It’s hard to know when and how a church plant should establish a formal membership.

At their inception, most church plants are not able to act as fully functioning congregations. In the absence of formal church membership, the church cannot exercise church discipline or administer the Lord’s Supper or baptism in a biblical way. So planters should feel a burden to establish membership as soon as it’s doable.

But what does it look like to move from a start-up to a congregation with membership?  

“How can we get involved in ministry in this church?”

The seasoned couple wanted to begin serving that very day—hosting small groups, leading Bible studies, anything. Encouraged by their enthusiasm, I simply urged them to continue coming along and getting to know the church better. The fact is, new attenders shouldn’t be serving the church in any official ways, from serving coffee to volunteering with childcare.  

(The following is excerpted from Jonathan Leeman’s forthcoming book Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus from Crossway, 2012).

1) It’s biblical. Jesus established the local church and all the apostles did their ministry through it. The Christian life in the New Testament is church life. Christians today should expect and desire the same.

What do Britney Spears, Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton and Al Gore have in common? If you answer, “All four have been members of Southern Baptist churches,” you move to the head of the class.

These four individuals are found in the branch of Christianity that also includes Al Mohler, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Bowden, and Billy Graham, among others. Our Southern Baptist churches include their share of prominent personalities. Some bring honor to our denomination. Others bring dishonor.

MEANINGLESS CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN THE SBC

Doing theology involves expressing universal biblical constants in ways that are meaningful in a particular context. Having spent the better part of two decades planting churches in foreign cultures, I could not have avoided this lesson even if I wanted to. Cross-cultural church planters are continually challenged with the need to teach Christian doctrine and at the same time urge contextually meaningful and appropriate applications of that doctrine.

How did a person join a congregation in the earliest days of Christianity? From one perspective, the question is easy to answer. Simply put, believer’s baptism was the church’s rite of entry down to the early fourth century.

But—and no surprise here—there was more to it than that.

CONFESSION AND BAPTISM