Theologian suggests three things for more meaningful membership

Written by Jerry Pierce, Managing Editor of South Baptist Texas Convention

John Hammett, professor of systematic theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., said churches could do three things to make membership more meaningful: drafting unique church covenants, reforming baptism and membership requirements, and restoring redemptive discipline.

Hammett’s suggestions were published in his paper “Regenerate Church Membership: The Baptist Mark of the Church,” during the Baptist Distinctives Series held at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in September.

Return to church covenants

Hammett cites Charles DeWeese’s assessment that a “commitment to church fellowship, an acceptance of the authority of the church’s discipline, a pledge to support the worship of the church and personal devotion, and a commitment to mutual care one for another appear in virtually all Baptist church covenants.”

“These documents are different from confessions of faith in that conduct is emphasized more than doctrine, though doctrine is often mentioned secondarily.”

Many parachurch organizations and Baptist bodies have offered model covenants—something Hammett warns against.

Instead, he encourages a conversation about what commitments Scripture requires of the local church members followed by a drafting of a new church covenant, and if necessary, the reconstituting of the church membership.

Hammett said a similar binding agreement is described in Nehemiah 9 and 10 as a covenant for Israel.

“Adopting a church covenant is one way God’s people today can say, ‘We will not neglect our church.’”

Hammett said once a new covenant is adopted, members should be asked to renew their commitment annually.

“In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the practice of covenanting declined,” Hammett wrote. “A number of factors contributed to this decline, among them the sacrifice of the ideal of regenerate church membership to the ideal of numerical growth, the general secularization of American society, and the unwillingness of church members to hold one another accountable.”

Reform baptism, church membership

Hammett wrote that early Baptists were confident in the local church’s ability to search for evidence of regeneration in the testimonies of prospective baptismal candidates. Fear of appearing judgmental keeps modern churches from doing this effectively, he contended.

Noting that human judgment is fallible, he wrote that “there are some measures churches may take to be responsible as well as hospitable in baptizing and welcoming new members.”

First, Hammett said, a clear separation must exist between welcoming someone who applies for membership and the granting of membership.

“In most Baptist churches in North America today, what happens when someone comes forward at the end of a service and asks for membership? There may be a few moments of whispered conversation but after a few perfunctory questions the person is presented for a church vote. The problem is the church members have no basis for voting on such a person. No one would think of opposing their request for membership and so the vote becomes a meaningless gesture, a relic of an earlier time when churches took membership more seriously.”

Instead, Hammett recommends new member classes that “bear some resemblance to the catechumenate of the early church, a time when new converts were taught the basic elements of the Christian faith before and as preparation for baptism. Among many Baptist groups outside of North America such classes are standard.”

Such classes serve several purposes, Hammett said, such as relationship building, introducing new members to the church’s ministries, providing the context for the crucial discussion of each person’s spiritual condition, and his understanding of the gospel.

Hammett said he knows of instances where prospects came to understand the gospel for the first time in a new member class and rejected it.

“But I think it is far better to know and reject the gospel, than to be baptized and think one is somehow safe without ever coming to an understanding of the gospel or what it means to place saving faith in Christ.”

Concerning the baptism of young children who make professions of faith, Hammett said it appears that earlier Baptists were reluctant to baptize them.

“Believer’s baptism was seen as virtually synonymous with adult baptism. To request baptism was regarded as a decision requiring a fair degree of maturity. … Overseas most Baptists delay baptism until the teenage years, but it is difficult to avoid arbitrariness in setting any specific minimum age for baptism.”

Hammett noted that in Jewish tradition the age of moral responsibility was 12.

“That may be the context for Paul’s statement in Romans 7:9: ‘Once I was alive apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.’ The commandment came to a Jewish boy at his bar mitzvah. This is the closest thing I have found to a biblical indication of the age of accountability, and that age is twelve. That was also when Jesus first began to manifest his special calling (Luke 2:41-50).”

Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif., for example, delays baptism until age 12 for children who make faith professions, Hammett wrote.

Further, he suggested that a pastor who presents a child who makes a faith profession should celebrate the child’s decision with his parents and the congregation and state that “at the appropriate time we will be presenting him as a candidate for baptism and church membership.”

Restore redemptive church discipline

Church discipline was a notable characteristic of the early Anabaptists and Baptists, was present in early America and still exists among Baptists elsewhere, Hammett contended.

It declined in the 19th century and “nearly disappeared” in the 20th century, Hammett said.

“It has faced some of the same obstacles as regenerate church membership as a whole: the overall secularization of American society, American individualism, the fear of appearing judgmental, and the desire for increasing numbers,”

Hammett said a clear biblical case of redemptive discipline appears in Matthew 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; Galatians 6:1; 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15; 1 Timothy 1:20; and 1 Timothy 5:19-20.

“As John L. Dagg said perceptively over a hundred years ago, ‘It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.’ How might pastors go about reinstituting discipline in churches today? In a word, they should do it carefully,” Hammett wrote.

In fact, restoring corrective discipline must only be done with patience, love and clear biblical teaching, Hammett argued.

“The people need to see and know that their pastor loves people, lest they think his ideas about church discipline are the produce of a hateful heart. He needs to lay a biblical foundation for church discipline by preaching and teaching on the texts dealing with church discipline and illustrate the teaching with examples of traditional Baptist support for this practice.”

Moreover, every member must clearly understand and acknowledge the church’s authority in discipline matters when signing the church covenant.

“Such statements can protect the church for lawsuits from members who are disciplined,” Hammett wrote. “They should also describe the goal of discipline as restoration for the one who is disciplined, and protection for the church and its corporate witness to the community.

“Furthermore, it should be clearly explained that discipline is not for the weak one who falls but repents and wants to grow in Christ, but for the strong one who rebels defiantly.”