Aimless, Meaningless Membership

By William Dudding

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. Have you ever heard that one before? Let me apply that principle to church membership. What does it mean to be a member in your church? Can you even articulate that or would you have to sit there and think about it for a minute? What is required of you? I can't think of any other institution that you need to be a member of that requires nothing in order to be a member. If you join a yacht club, there are certain criteria that you must live up to maintain membership. Owning a yacht, going to meetings, etc. If you join Costco, you have to pay an annual fee and get an ID card at the very least. However, our churches require even less than that to become members! If all you have to do is claim to be saved and baptized and BINGO, you're in....then what? What are the requirements, commitments, conditions and consequences for not meeting them? What ever happened to church covenants? You used to be able to find them in the back of the hymnbook, and they were recited every week by the membership. Now, all you have to do is walk the aisle, get a motion, second and all in favor say "Amen". Most churches have more people on their membership roll than they have in their services. One of my friends who attends Valley Bible Church in Vallejo told me that he was actually denied membership the first time around. The elders wanted to make sure he and his wife were serious about the commitments that they were going to make to be active obedient members of Christ's Body.

As much as I loathe the "Purpose-Driven" fad that has swept through the Laodecian contemporary church, Rick Warren did make a good point in his Purpose Driven Church book about membership. People at Saddleback Church have to complete a class and sign a church covenant before they are permitted to join. If we all did that, we'd have more people in our services than on our rosters. He said: "If you want to join a church with a meaningless membership, it won't be ours!" At least he got that right even though finding a cure for AIDS and building homes for Habitat for Humanity isn't a part of the church's true purpose!

In the old Puritan churches, if you missed church for three weeks in a row without a good excuse (health or death) then your membership was revoked for being disobedient to the Lord's command to assemble together! Like I've said before, church was not for the faint of heart for the Puritans! Let's think about what God requires of us as Christians and church members and then make it a requirement for church membership. If going to church is just a place to punch in and punch out, then you might as well go to work and get paid for it.