For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Stephen Witmer (PhD, University of Cambridge), lead pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, Massachusetts, to present a biblical case for church membership.
Does the Bible present local-church membership as a part of the faithful Christian life? My answer is yes. But in making that case, the first and necessary step is to provide a clear definition of the kind of membership for which I’ll argue.
My aim is not to argue for every contemporary practice of church membership — there are surely some that exceed, ignore, or defy biblical teaching. Nor do I intend to do exegetical gymnastics in order to find membership classes, membership interviews, or membership rolls explicitly mandated in the biblical texts. Rather, in this essay I’ll offer a definition of church membership, respond to an objection, show the biblical foundations for church membership as I’ve defined it, and draw out several implications for how this understanding of membership shapes our posture toward, and participation in, a local church.
Defining Membership
Here’s an understanding of church membership that I’ll argue has secure biblical foundations:1
Church membership is a clear and continuing mutual commitment between an individual Christian and a local church, in which the church endorses the member’s profession and shepherds the member’s soul, and the member submits to the church’s authority and shares in the church’s life.
Let’s note seven components of this definition.
First, the church membership for which I’ll argue is, at root, a commitment. It is not an automatic, de facto reality but rather a specific choice to obligate oneself to another. Until that commitment is made, membership doesn’t exist.
Second, the commitment is between an individual Christian and a local church. Married couples and families don’t become church members as couples and families. Membership is the commitment of an individual. And that commitment is made not with the universal church, composed of all believers throughout time and space, but with a particular local church.
Third, the commitment is mutual — bilateral rather than unilateral. To be a member requires more than simply an individual Christian saying, “I want to be a member,” or even, “I commit to be a member.” For there to be membership, the local church must also commit itself to the individual.
Fourth, the local church specifically commits to the individual member to endorse his or her profession of faith (as long as it remains credible) and to shepherd his or her soul (as long as the membership lasts). The local church therefore has significant responsibility for its members, both affirming that each is a Christian and laboring to ensure that each perseveres as one.
Fifth, the individual member specifically commits to the local church to submit to the church’s authority and share in the church’s life. In other words, the individual member obligates himself to be present within the gathered relationships and activities of the church and to yield to the shepherding and teaching of the church, as it follows the Lord Jesus.
Sixth, in church membership, this mutual commitment between an individual Christian and a local church is clear. It’s explicit and understood by both parties — not unstated, assumed, or implied, but obvious and evident.
Seventh, in church membership, this mutual commitment between an individual Christian and a local church is not merely a one-time, initial agreement but a continuing one. When one party ceases to keep the commitments, membership ends.
Objection: Is This What Paul Meant?
There’s an obvious objection to my definition of church membership — namely, it’s not what the apostle Paul meant when he spoke of Christians being “members” of Christ’s body. In 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul says to those in the Corinthian church, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” He doesn’t mean (so the objection goes) that the Corinthian Christians have progressed through an opt-in membership process at some point subsequent to their conversions. Rather, in Paul’s view, every believer, simply by virtue of becoming a follower of Jesus, is a de facto member of Christ’s body. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Note especially the repeated word all in that verse. To be in Christ is to be a member of Christ’s body as Paul conceives of membership. You can’t be a Christian and not be a member. This kind of membership isn’t administered by the elders or other leaders of the church. Rather, God himself composes the body (1 Corinthians 12:24).
The objection can be sharpened. Not only does my definition use the term membership in an un-Pauline way, but worse, by imposing on local churches a structured, organizational, opt-in, “mutual commitment” form of membership, it excludes as members of the body of Christ many believers whom Paul includes — those who are converted and baptized yet do not become church members in the modern “mutual commitment” sense.
I think the objection misses Paul’s purpose in 1 Corinthians 12. The broader context indicates that Paul is concerned neither to advocate for nor to exclude the “mutual commitment” form of church membership I’ve described. Rather, he has other pressing concerns. Diverse spiritual gifts are present within a church that is already pridefully inclined toward division (1 Corinthians 1:10–17). So, Paul aims to teach the Corinthians about their deep unity amid rich diversity. The metaphor for which he reaches is that of a human body with many individual parts, each contributing to the whole.
In his essay “Membership,” C.S. Lewis notes that, in our modern way of speaking and thinking, membership refers to inclusion in a class of similar objects or people. The phrase “members of a class” refers to things that are alike. Lewis describes the problem he perceives: “I am afraid that when we describe a man as ‘a member of the Church’ we usually mean nothing Pauline: we mean only that he is a unit — that he is one more specimen of some kind of things as X and Y and Z.”2 But, as Lewis notes, when Paul thought of members of the church, “he meant what we should call organs, things essentially different from, and complementary to, one another: things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity.”3 Membership as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 12 refers to every believer belonging to — and bless
