Members Of His Body

Christianity started as a movement but movements have a bad habit of becoming institutions. One of the key things about movements is that they move. They are dynamic, innovative, permission-giving, adaptable, outward-looking and growing. Institutions tend to be highly structured, bound by rules and procedures and inward-looking. They talk more about what you cannot do than about what you can do. They tend to talk about death more than life. Movements look to the future; institutions look to the past.

The church started as a movement that was dynamic and spread rapidly but it is too easy for churches to become institutions and to fossilise, to become just organisations relying on programmes and policies but lacking the presence and power and life of God.

I am very aware that some people have reservations about church membership. Some of those reservations I absolutely understand. I do not agree but I do understand. They are very genuine. Some are not genuine at all; they are pretty dodgy. You might detect some cynicism in my voice later.

In some people’s minds, church membership says “Institution. Rigidity. Control”! They look at the church in the New Testament. They see a dynamic movement and they say, “They didn’t have membership lists. They didn’t have all this organisational structure. The church should be an organism – a living, breathing, growing natural life-form – not a lifeless organisation.” We would all agree with that, wouldn’t we? We want the church to be alive with Holy Spirit dynamism, open to new things, adaptable. Let’s vote on that.

As with many things, it is possible to go to extremes in either direction when, often, wisdom lies somewhere in the middle. Drawing a sharp distinction between the organic and the organised is a mistake, because the organic is organised. It is not one or the other; it is both. Every living organism, from a single cell, to a giant redwood, to the earth itself, has structure. God has built structure into every organism. Without structure it simply could not function. The same is true of a church.

The Bible likens the church to a body. A human body is an organism, a natural, living, breathing, moving thing. But imagine a body with no bones. It would collapse. Imagine a body with no circulatory system or nervous system or any other system. A body with no structure would be a puddle of goo on the floor.

The Bible talks of the body consisting of many parts all interdependent, each one necessary for all of the others and each part supported by the rest of the body. There is a huge amount of organisation within a body. God designed it to be organic and organised.

Think of the other images used for the church in the Bible. An army: highly structured, highly organised. A family: clear structure. A building: stones carefully, systematically ordered for a purpose. A pile of stones is virtually useless; organised into a building those same stones become highly useful.

We saw last week that Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in the churches they had established only a short time earlier. Organisation. The Bible talks about the roles of elders and deacons. The Bible talks about the spiritual gift of administration. Organisation is a Holy Spirit gifting. Administrators are a blessing to the church. Think of all of the places in the Bible where God tells the people to appoint leaders of tens, leaders of fifties, leaders of hundreds and leaders of thousands. Organisation. We could think of dozens of other examples where God says how things are to be done. Organisation.

It can sound kind-of spiritual to say that a church should not be an organisation but it is not even remotely biblical. It is possible to be so organised and structured that it squeezes the life out of a church and leaves no room for God to move. Over-organisation will kill a church. Institutionalisation will kill a church, but lack of organisation will also kill a church. We need to find the balance – organisation that enables life.

So, what about membership? Is membership a biblical concept? Does the concept of membership stifle the life of a church, or does it enable the life of the church?

I let the cat out of the bag last week when I didn’t mean to, but ‘member’ literally means a part of a body. Several years ago, Chris and I witnessed an accident in which five people were killed. We had to give evidence in the coroner’s court. The police would not show us the photos of the scene because they were too gruesome. Some of the first responders had been traumatised by what they had seen. Police would not show us the photos but they described the victims of the crash as being ‘dismembered and scattered’.

Just as a sidenote, I believe God miraculously protected us from seeing that scene. We turned around, went back to the nearest farm, rang 111, then drove right through the accident site, stopping on the other side, and somehow, did not see the carnage. I have no explanation for that other than God.

The Bible uses the word ‘member’ in that literal sense for body parts. For example…

Romans 6:13

Do not offer your members (or, some translation say ‘any part of yourself’) to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer your members (offer your body) to Him as an instrument of righteousness.

But then Paul uses the body as a metaphor for the church and we are the parts of the body; we are the members. The concept of membership of an organisation is rooted in that biblical image of the church.

Ephesians 5:29-30

no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body.

The church is the body of Christ, and we are the members.

Ephesians 2:19

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,

Romans 12:4-5

4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

“Each member belongs to all the others”. That is profound. Nobody can be independent. No one can be a disconnected part of the body. The members are organically joined to one another.

OK, but do we need lists of members. Let’s just have people involved. Lists are too bureaucratic. That is the sort of organisation that stifles life. Did the New Testament churches have membership lists?

Yes, of course they did! It is obvious! Isn’t it? I cannot prove this beyond reasonable doubt, but I think all of the evidence points in that direction. Last week, we talked about 3,000 converts being added to the church on the Day of Pentecost. In other words, they knew who belonged to the church. They added 3,000 people that day. Whether the list was written down or not is irrelevant. Even if it was just common knowledge in their heads, they had a list. They knew who was on it and who wasn’t.

As the numbers grew it would make sense to not rely on common knowledge. Maybe people’s memories fade, or different people have different understandings of whether an individual was part of the church or not. It would be eminently sensible to write it down. Avoid confusion, avoid arguments, write it down. Writing it down is not unspiritual. Good organisational systems help churches to function better.

For example, 1 Timothy 5 talks about churches caring for widows, but listen to the level of organisation and notice that they had lists. They knew who were living godly lives, who had family, who needed help.

READ 1 Timothy 5:3-11a

The Bible also talks about people being put out of the church – people who are in obvious sin and unrepentant. They are put out of the church in the hope that that will wake them up and they repent. The purpose is not to punish but to redeem. 1 Corinthians 5 refers to a man who was in a sexual relationship with his stepmother. Paul says this is sexual immorality of a type that not even pagans would tolerate. He says the Corinthians should put this man out of their fellowship. A little later, he says, “I am writing to you that you must not associate with any who claim to be fellow believers but are sexually immoral or greedy, idolaters or slanderers, drunkards or swindlers… Expel the wicked person from among you.” (1 Cor 5:11, 13b)

Again, that shows there was clarity about who were members of the church. These people were; these people were not.

People sometimes ask, “Why do I need to state my faith in Jesus and my commitment to this church?” and I wonder, “But why would you not be willing to do that?”.

Sometimes people do not want to be members of a church because they want to avoid the responsibilities that go with membership. They do not, for example, want to be accountable. If you are not on a list, you cannot be taken off it. Or they do not want to serve in any way. Or they do not ant to have to fit in with other people. They want to be independent rather than part of a body. They want to be loosely associated so as to enjoy the benefits but avoid the responsibilities.

Other people do not want to be closely associated with a church because they see the flaws in it. No church is quite good enough for them. They are a little bit too cool for the church.

Sometimes the difficulty is the denomination. People might have been part of a different denomination and feel they do not want to turn their backs on that. Or, people might not agree with some decisions a denomination has made and do not want to be associated with that. I understand that. I tend to look at it like this. When you join a church, it is primarily about expressing faith in Jesus and a commitment to that local fellowship. This church, for example, is a Presbyterian Church, but of all the things that membership means, the denominational link is at the bottom of the list. These days, denominational affiliation is of little significance. If you shift to another town, you might or might not join a Presbyterian Church. There is no long-term commitment to Presbyterianism. The commitment is to this fellowship.

Last week we looked at what a church is: a really, really tightly-knit group of Christ-followers who have chosen to do life together and to serve together and to grow together and to care for one another. It is apparent that the church is not something you drift in and out of or float around the edges. I believe the nature of the church requires us to say, “I’m in. I choose to stand with these people for Jesus”.

But so does the practical functioning of a church. For example, would it be wise for us to as you to vote on possible new elders but we say, “We have no idea if this person is a Christian or is committed to this church”? And should non-Christians vote on who should lead a church? How can we know? By people saying, “I am committed to Jesus and to this church.”

Why would any organisation put into leadership people not willing to state their commitment to that organisation?

If someone is already a Christian, should we constantly try to persuade him to become a Christian? That doesn’t make sense. It would be dumb to evangelise already-Christians and equally dumb to expect non-Christians to live a Christian life. We have to know.

We cannot function as a church without knowing what we are dealing with. Our commitment to Jesus and our commitment to His church are not meant to be vague. Our Mission Membership service next Sunday is an opportunity for us to stand up and say, or say again, “Father God, I have chosen to live my life for Jesus, and I have chosen to do that as part of this group of Your people.”  

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