August 2024
Why Should I Belong to the Local Church and Take Membership Vows?
Feature Article
August 2024
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Not too long ago, I was talking to one of the members of a church I served. We were in a social setting, and this person kind of casually said: “I hope this doesn’t offend you, but I don’t see the big deal about coming to church. I mean, you like the outdoors, too. Don’t you feel so much closer to God there? I do. I don’t see the point of coming to church.” You read the first sentence correctly—this person was a member of the local church.
I think a lot of people reason as my friend does. They believe that since trusting in Jesus is a personal decision, then faith is ultimately private. The logic seems inescapable. After all, no one can believe for us. We have to believe individually, or we will not be saved.
But the conclusion that our faith is private does not follow from this premise. The Scriptures make clear that Christians are members of Christ’s body, the church (1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 3:6). The very image of a body indicates that believers were never meant to live the Christian life by ourselves. Once we are united to Christ by faith alone, we are joined to His body, the church. The two are inseparable.
Given that so many professing Christians question church membership, we need to address two questions in this article. First, why should you belong to a local church? Second, why should you take membership vows? A positive answer to the first implies the same for the second, as I will try to show.
why should you join a local church?
At the outset, I have sympathy for people who question church membership. I’ve been a pastor for almost twenty years, and I have seen how the church hurts people. The local church can be a messy place. Why subject ourselves to this kind of group? Our default setting is to run from such relational hardship. But given that church membership is biblical, running away is not an option. In fact, local church membership offers us blessings that do not extend to nonmembers. Let’s look at a few of them.
Church membership, in its best expression, means that we have a right to the government and discipline of the local church. A basic biblical principle is the right of the people of God to elect their leaders to represent them (Acts 15:1–3; 1 Tim. 3:1–13). The beauty and harmony of God’s design in church government are evident: we elect qualified men to shepherd us, and we submit ourselves to them. The local church is the only place where this happens in a God-ordained fashion.
As another article in this issue explains, when we speak of having a right to the discipline of the church, we mean positive church discipline. Put simply, if the local church is functioning as it should, its members will be cared for by the elders. They will shepherd them and care for them. That is the essence of positive discipline. Nonmembers do not enjoy this kind of shepherding care.
Church members are also the only proper recipients of the sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I recognize that many churches that administer the sacraments do not believe in church membership. The question for these friends is, “On what basis do you administer the sacraments?” For example, we are warned about eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner (1 Cor. 11:27). But apart from church government and discipline, who will hold us accountable to this scriptural teaching?
As noted above, church membership and taking membership vows imply one another. As with church membership, we should recognize that it is biblical to take vows, placing ourselves under the authority of a local governing body and obligating ourselves to serve in a local church (Heb. 13:7, 17; 1 Peter 5:2).
should you take membership vows?
Essential to our understanding membership vows is the biblical concept of covenant. God covenanted with Adam in the covenant of works, which he promptly broke. But God’s grace is greater than our rebellion. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states, “The Lord was pleased to make a second [covenant], commonly called the covenant of grace” (7.3). The covenant of grace was administered differently from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to Christ.
Basic to both covenants was the gracious action of God in entering into a relationship with His creatures. Both covenants were administered through a federal head: Adam and Christ, respectively. Therefore, life in covenant with God is both relational and representative.
The relational order, as it were, of this covenant life is first vertical and then horizontal. We are brought into a right relationship with God through faith alone in the federal head, Jesus (the vertical). From there, God calls us to live out our new identity in Jesus, our representative federal head, corporately (the horizontal).
This brief summary of covenant theology highlights the importance of vows. In both covenants, God obligates Himself to us, swearing an oath to fulfill what He promised (see Heb. 6:13–18). Of course, an oath and a vow are different. But both obligate us. Just as God covenanted with His people in Christ, so He calls them to live in covenant, first vertically, with Him, and then horizontally, with each other.
More to the point, the idea of taking vows is presupposed all throughout the Old Testament. From the vow offering (Lev. 7:16) to the Nazirite vow (Num. 6:2) to the more general prescriptions for vows (Eccl. 5:4–5), vows take place in the context of the covenant community. They assume that the one who vows will be held accountable to God by other believers around him.
Both church membership and membership vows are implications from the text of Scripture. They are not directly prescribed because they did not need to be. They were assumed from the very beginning of God’s dealings with His people.
the blessings of life together
Relationships require risk. This is why so many people question church membership, I think. They don’t believe that the risk is worth the reward. I hope that this article will help us reconsider this mindset. As we conclude, I want to mention two more benefits of church membership that we tend to overlook.
First, committing to a local church forces us to love others who are not like us. This is especially true in multiethnic, multiracial churches. But every church is going to have people who are different or people who irritate you—and you and I will irritate others, too. That’s the point. God uses difficult people like us to bring about change in our lives.
Second, belonging to a local church gives us a foretaste of heaven. Every time we worship at our local church, we enter the always-gathered assembly of heaven (Heb. 12:22–24, 28). The local church may seem unspectacular and spectacularly difficult. But church membership on earth is a mark that our true citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20).
Finally, and most importantly, Jesus loves the local church. He gave His life for the people who gather there. He is interceding for them right now. The call to church membership is therefore simply the call to love those whom our Lord loves.