Creating Healthy Membership Practices

It’s day one of your new pastorate. You’ve inherited a church with meaningless membership.¹^{1 .} As opposed to “meaningful membership,” which would describe a church made up of people who 1) have a credible Christian testimony, 2) attend the Lord’s Day gathering regularly, and 3) understand the biblical privileges and commands entailed by participation at the Lord’s Table (e.g. the “one another” commands of the NT). What in the world are you to do? What membership practices should you implement?

As a new pastor, there’s a type of triage required of you. Not a triage of what’s urgent (like the triage unit at your local emergency room), but a triage of what’s wise. There are things you should do immediately and things you should do eventually. It’s your job to triage toward that end.

Let me give you an idea of how this might look.

Things to Do Immediately

1. Make Corporate Applications in Your Sermons

As you give yourself to Christ-centered expositional preaching, help your people connect the dots between the gospel and its implications for the corporate life of the church. Point them frequently from the text to the “why” of your church’s philosophy of ministry. If the Lord produces change in your church, it won’t be through the force of your personality; only the Spirit of God through the Word of God produces lasting change.

2. Pray Publicly about Healthy Membership Practices

Praying publicly for your church’s body life sets a tone of priorities. Utilize your pastoral prayer. The congregation will learn what you and the elders value.

For instance, you might pray that the Lord would grant your church a warm culture of discipling and evangelism, an atmosphere where it’s natural for your members to work for the spiritual good of others. You could pray for transparent relationships to flourish among your congregation. Toward the top of the prayer list should always be humility and gospel unity.

One caveat: be careful not to passive-aggressively “subtweet” the church or individual members when you pray. One of the worst things you could do is try to shame your members into action. Rather, hold out a cheerful vision of how you hope the church will look one day.

3. Teach about the Local Church

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that most Christians today think the local church is less important than God does. If your membership practices are flimsy, I guarantee your people’s understanding of what a church is and does is poor.

There are multiple ways to equip your people with biblical ecclesiology.

Include the doctrine of the church in your rotation of discipleship classes or offer it as a modular class for those who want more than your regular curriculum.
Preach through an epistle like Ephesians or 1 Timothy that puts strong ecclesiological pillars in place.
Preach a topical series on a church’s practices²^{2 .} At Redeeming Grace Church, I’ve preached a periodic series entitled The Disciplines of a Godly Church (yes, it’s a shameless knock-off of Kent Hughes’s book title). It’s a Church Life 101-type of series. I’ve preached two sermons at a time from the series as a bridge between expositional series. Here are the ten sermon titles: Gather Together, Listen Together, Pray Together, Sing Together, Disciple Together, Serve Together, Evangelize Together, Submit Together, Give Together, Send Together. or the corporate implications of the ordinances.

4. Start a Regular Prayer Meeting

Nothing unifies a church like praying together. Through prayer, God works and love grows.

A pragmatic benefit of prayer meetings is that you’ll quickly discover who the committed and growing members are, a core that will hopefully grow over time. I’d encourage you to make your prayer meetings highly relational and focus on the church’s mission of making disciples. In addition to soliciting requests from the congregation, have a set of standing requests³^{3 .} Our standing requests are: 1) Pray for the regular preaching and teaching of the Word. 2) Pray for a warm culture of discipling and evangelism. 3) Pray for the conversion of unbelievers who attend our services. 4) Pray for our children and teens’ salvation and growth in Christ. 5) Pray for unity amid our diversity. 6) Pray for wisdom and provision regarding our facilities.with a Great Commission heartbeat.

5. Distribute a Membership Directory

A wise man once called a church’s membership directory “a Christian’s second most important book.” A published directory not only raises the visibility profile of your membership, but it also becomes a tool to increase connectivity and prayer. Encourage your congregation to pray for a handful of members each day. Even if they don’t yet understand the “why” of meaningful membership, they’ll start to intuitively sense its importance.

Of course, this idea isn’t any good unless you refresh the directory whenever you welcome new members. A printed directory is the most age-inclusive format, but plenty of church software apps make a digital directory available for tech-savvy members.

6. Hold a Membership Class

You might be tempted to wait on this one, but I wouldn’t recommend it.⁴^{4 .} The obvious exception is if your church doesn’t have formal church membership when you arrive. A required class for prospective members helps instill your desired DNA in all newcomers, and it implicitly signals the importance of membership to the entire congregation.

This class should teach what the church expects of its members and what the members can expect from the church. A good place to start is your church’s statement of faith, covenant, and history.

7. Interview Prospective Members

If someone completes the class and wants to move forward in membership, have one of the elders interview the candidate about his testimony and understanding of the gospel. It’s shocking how much pastoral work gets done in these conversations—from discerning false professions, to diagnosing the need for baptism, to discovering sin struggles. Take these times seriously; they’re an essential way that elders protect and foster regenerate church membership.

This conversation also provides a natural time to reiterate the expectations and commitments of becoming part of your church family.

8. Model Meaningful Membership

One of the most important things you do in any season of pastoral ministry is model what you teach. Concerning membership, work hard early to develop relationships. Invite members to your home. Disciple them. Encourage them. Care for them. Be honest with them. Let them know that you’re a church member first and pastor second.

If you practice what you preach, in time you may look over your shoulder and see many others imitating you.

Things to Do Eventually

1. Make Membership the Doorway to Involvement

One of the most counter-cultural principles of meaningful membership is that commitment to the church precedes formal involvement with it, not vice versa. Most churches view home groups and serving as slow on-ramps to the commitment of membership. However, that unwittingly undermines regenerate church membership. It bypasses the congregation’s role of affirming the person’s testimony through baptism and membership, relying instead on a person’s word and the private judgment of an elder or ministry leader.

Allowing formal involvement before commitment also implies that membership doesn’t have much value. It teaches that remaining a Christian free agent is okay until you’re comfortable and that membership is merely a procedural matter, not a biblical or spiritual one.

I debated whether to include this item in the “immediately” or “eventually” category. It probably overlaps with both. I would immediately restrict “platform” involvement in corporate worship to members. However, it might be wise to roll out this principle more slowly regarding who can serve in certain ministries and participate in small groups.⁵^{5 .} This statement assumes that your home groups are a programmatic way to encourage fulfilling the promises of the church covenant. Our church allows visitors to attend men’s and women’s Bible studies, as well as all worship and prayer services. But formal service and inclusion in our home groups are limited to members.

2. Institute Corrective Discipline

There’s a temptation for new pastors to plow ahead in church discipline should a warranted case arise. But don’t institute corrective discipline until you’ve had adequate time to teach and develop trust capital with your congregation. Moving too fast could cause the church to turn against you unnecessarily, but moving too slow could allow the cancer of unrepentant sin to destroy the church. Don’t be hasty, but don’t let the fear of man paralyze you either.

3. Address the Governing Documents

This one makes me chuckle because I led our church through a reconstituting process in the first four months of my pastorate. But my situation was unique. My predecessor had done the heavy lifting of a revitalization process.

Most of the time, addressing governing documents (statement of faith, covenant, bylaws) is a long-term project. But don’t let the daunting nature of the task, or the time it might require, dampen your enthusiasm if it needs to be done.

Governing documents are massively important. They allow you to inject the DNA of meaningful membership more quickly and easily into the bloodstream of the church, and they make your church’s public profile more appealing to those looking for a church with meaningful membership. Replacing bad governing documents is a good goal for the tail end of your first five years of ministry.