Video Transcript: Church Membership

And there are other people who really value church membership because they have their name on a piece of paper, they almost never attend. They have no meaningful walk with Jesus, but their church members. Well, I want to talk about church membership today, not in the sense of having your name on the churches roles are on a piece of paper. 

But in terms of being a real meaningful member, a part of the body of Jesus in a local place that might involve having a list some churches keep track of a membership of sorts that way, but I what I really want to talk about is membership as regular, faithful, long term involvement in a church. And that kind of church membership is not all that stable in a good many congregations. Many people today have reasons for leaving churches and local churches lose a lot of people who have been attending and have been involved for a while. 

Some people are droppers, they just quit church, they ditch it completely. Others are hoppers, they switch churches, often they don't quit church altogether, it just seems that they're going to a different church with quite a bit of frequency. So you have the droppers who ditch the hoppers who switch, and between those two groups, local churches lose quite a few people. Now, as we think about this phenomenon of droppers and hoppers, there's quite a number of reasons why they might leave, let's first think about why droppers would just quit church altogether and ditch it. I'll just give you a number of the reasons that I have. It's not any scientific survey, I've read quite a bit in sociology of religion, and in studies of why people might leave churches. But today, I just want to share with you mainly what I've come across in my own experience as a church leader, and in conversation with other pastors. One obvious one is, I'm busy. 

And I've got too many things to do. And I just don't have time to attend church or be involved in it. Some people have other things they'd rather do on a Sunday morning, they'd like to sleep in, they'd like to cut the grass, they'd like to wash the car. Others have Sunday as their shopping day. And they'd rather go shopping and go to church, or they'd rather bring their kids to soccer than go to church, or they'd rather watch ESPN than go to church, they have a lot of things they just assumed do. Some don't go to church or go for a little while and drop out and stop attending any church at all. Because they feel out of place there. They feel awkward. They feel uncomfortable. And whatever the reason for that discomfort is, they'd rather not be there, and they drop out of church. Some are wounded, they're angry about something, they have a run in with somebody in the church or with someone in the church's leadership. And they want nothing to do with church anymore. They don't just leave that church, they don't want anything to do with any church. And they're mad, and they're gone. Some feel guilty, they maybe have done something, that they're ashamed of themselves, and maybe not too many other people know about it, but they know it. And they feel it more heavily when they're in church. And so dropping out and staying out of church makes them feel their guilt less. Or there are people who feel embarrassed because things they've done are pretty well known among the church people and they think that folks are looking at them kind of funny. And they're going to just stay away from church because that way, they don't have to feel bad. 

Some people drop church entirely because they say I don't need organized religion. I'm into spirituality, not organized religion. And so spirituality might be a feeling they have or some personal private practices they have, but they're not going to be part of any organized group. Another reason why droppers just ditch and quit church all together is they don't believe if they ever did believe anything, they don't anymore. And so, why go to church and play the hypocrite when they're not Christians, and they're willing to admit it? Well, those are just some of the reasons why droppers ditch church and stop going all together. And then there's a whole different group of people who drop out of your particular church not to quit church entirely, but to switch churches. Why would hoppers go from one church to another and switch and oftentimes it's not just one switch in a lifetime, but every few months or every few years. They're off to another church, even if they haven't moved to a new area. Well, I'll just give you some of the reasons I've come across one that I heard was a man who thought that projectors in church are evil, because projectors are also used to show bad films and other things that are bad. And it was just corrupt to have any kind of a projector in church showing those pictures on the screen. His approach for a while was to stay home and watch church on a TV screen, I made a lot of sense, but that's what he did. Another guy will say, Oh, I just don't feel the Holy Spirit in the music. And there might not be enough guitar and drums to get the pulse pounding. And so that prevents a person from feeling the Holy Spirit in the music. Or somebody else may say, Well, I really feel the Holy Spirit when the pipe organ and the majestic instruments are playing. So you may have opposite tastes in music. But the same kind of reason is given, I just didn't feel the Holy Spirit in that particular kind of music. I know of quite a number of people in various churches who left that particular church because of a building project, the building project, and it's designed didn't go the way they think it should have, or they were part of a committee and the committee didn't always get along, or budget issues happen, or whatever. 

But building projects are a great way to lose some people. Another way to lose people is they thought the drama program was better at a different church. Some was Sunday school, and a church doesn't offer Sunday school because it's more of a family integrated church. And so they don't have separate Sunday school classes. My church, for instance, encourages and equips parents to teach their children at home. But if you're looking for a Sunday school, you may think that our church sounds good for a while. But then you come there, and you kind of miss what Sunday school had off your kids. So then you go to one that does have one. There may be people in a sports program associated with the church that didn't play the kids in the sports program as much as they wanted to, or a coach scolded one of the kids. And that made the parents mad, but a church's sports program mistreated our kid and we're out of here. Our son was turned down when he asked a girl to be his girlfriend, and he's not comfortable around here anymore, and neither are we. And we don't think that girls should have done that. A leaders kids cut in line at potlucks. And if he can't keep his own kids behaving well, we're gonna go to another church where the leaders kids are better behaved. A mother might say, and I've heard them say, my nine year old boy was roughed up by another kid and we're leaving, we're gonna go to a church where children are treated right? The list goes on, I could add to this list for a long time, I'll just give you a few more people know about my drunk driving, I'm kind of embarrassed because around here people know me and they know about that thing. And I feel more comfortable if I'm somewhere else. People around here dressed to immodestly, the neck lines are too low, the hemlines are too high. Or you might get the opposite thing where someone would that low neckline and the high hemline, or somebody likes to wear blue jeans says I don't feel comfortable in this church they they dress up to formally and that's just not for me. 

The church budget was voted on to soon at one particular case of somebody who objected that the church budget was was published and and given to the congregation only one week in advance instead of two weeks in advance. And I want to be a part of a church that just does things. So fly by night when it comes to financial matters. Another church is just more alive. And it's kind of hard to put a finger on what alive means. And maybe some churches really are totally dead. But what makes the church lively kind of depends from person to person. And you'll find that frequent church hoppers find that a church is really alive. For the first few months, they're there. And the adrenaline level drops a bit. And then that church isn't quite as alive as it used to be. And they'll find another one that's more alive for those first several months till the thrill of the new wears off. I get mad, just see that person. There's somebody who's part of that church that just bugged you. In some cases that may be a spouse that there's been a divorce and they can't stand being the same building. But it can also just be that there's been a major run and people are angry with each other and they don't want to see each other anymore.

I know people who have been assisted by the church, they received ongoing support from the deacons to help them in situations and when the deacons thought that the support was not being helpful or that it was being misused. They stopped going to church the minute the money stopped. The pastor reminds him of my father. I've heard that one and not evidently in a good way because That was one of the reasons given for leaving the church and He reminded them too much of his own dad. Other sermons are too long and too boring. I want to go someplace where they're shorter and snappier. Or kind of the opposite thing. We want more detailed in depth verse by verse teaching, not the shallow stuff. So you can get a whole variety of reasons that I could give a much longer list based on my more than 20 years of experience in ministry, and on other pastors who I've spoken with. At anyway, we have droppers who ditch, we have hoppers who switch and as we think about that, we've got this phenomenon of people who continue to go from one church to another to another, you might call it the circulation of the saints. And I think it has something in common with, with trends in marriage nowadays, I think that many more people today than was formerly the case are a bit allergic to long term commitment. It's become more and more common for people to attend a church, but not to join it as committed members. And I think that has somewhat of a parallel to the phenomenon of a man and a woman living together nowadays, without a marriage commitment, that's become more and more common.

Now, I'm not saying that church involvement is quite the same as marriage, the Bible commands that we remain committed to the same spouse for life. I'm just saying that there is a similarity in not wanting to commit and stick with it, even when you're not really feeling like it very much. And, and there's a reluctance to make any commitment in the first place. Quite, I've known a number of people who said, very specifically, I don't want to become a church member, even though they were quite involved in the church because they didn't want that commitment thing, that accountability thing, the sense that they can't just leave at the, at the snap of the finger at the drop of a hat. It's also become common for people to join the church, but then leave and join another and then leave and join another leave and join another. And they may join as members. But it means not a whole lot. Just and I think there's some parallel to that with serial divorce in our culture, people make promises at the altar. In fact, they may make them six or seven times with six or seven different people. Those promises that promise till death do us part didn't quite seem to mean a whole lot. And so there may be people who make a very strong commitment to at least the words to a church, and then make that same commitment. At the next church, they join. And at the next church, they move to and so on. So you get the circulation of the saints, and it has some parallel with marriage, in our culture, with live in lovers instead of making a commitment in the first place. And with more and more frequent divorce where commitment means until I get tired of this or until something better comes along. 

Now, when we ask why would people leave church? The basic answer is almost any reason is good enough to leave if you don't have a solid reason to stay. Okay, I've just given a lot of reasons why people will either ditch or switch. But the fact of the matter is just about any reason is good enough to leave if you don't have clear, solid reasons to stay put in. So we need to think about why stick with church. One reason is that the church is Christ's bride as its portrayed in the Bible. And so when I think about sticking with church in general, not yet talking about sticking with this congregation as compared to that congregation, but simply being part of a congregation you need to be part of, of the Church of a church because it's Christ's bride. What would you think of a person who came up to you and you're married to a wife, whom you love very much, and you praise her very much. And this guy comes up to him and says, you know, I kind of liked you. You're pretty good, pal. I'd like to hang out with you. But I can't stand that stinking wife of yours. I don't want anything to do with her. Are you going to be good buds with that guy who can't stand your wife and speaks ill of her? Well, do you think you can just ditch the Bride of Christ altogether and ignore church completely? And yet think things are just fine between you and Jesus? Doesn't work that way. Another picture in the Bible is the church as a building, as God's temple, as God's building founded on Jesus Christ. And it's pretty hard to stand on a building's foundation without being in that building. If Jesus is the foundation of the church, and you want Jesus to be your foundation without being in the church, that's gonna be a little hard to do. Still, another picture of the church in the Bible is the church as Christ's body. 

Now, it'd be kind of odd to go around, toting somebody's head under your arm all the time and say, Yeah, I really friends with this head. But some folks try that in relation to Jesus, they want to have their arm hugging Jesus the head. And they don't want that church body thing hanging around. But it it you simply cannot connect to the head, if you want nothing to do with the body and don't want to be part of Jesus body. So those are three very important pictures in the Bible of the church in relation to Jesus. And it seems very, very difficult to have a living healthy relationship with Jesus, and to have none with his church. In the Bible, we see why it's important to be involved in, in church. And in the early church portrayed in the book of Acts, we read this, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. There's a lot of stuff that goes on at churches, and not all of it is very important to be honest with you. But there are certain simple core things that are vital to the life of every church, and they are vital to your life as a Christian, and why you need to be part of that church. And so those of us who are Christians need to be part of a body that has these elements of simple church. And those of us who are church leaders need to make it clear to people why it's so very important to be included in a body and to be members of a body rather than just going alone. One thing we see here is the apostles teaching. 

You go to church to be taught to hear the Word of God preached to hear the scriptures read, and then explained by someone who has a calling, and a gifting to bring that word to others, and to apply it to their lives. Now, this is not in place of reading the Bible at home, it's very important to study the Bible on your own to hear God's word yourself and to talk with other people about it. But the Lord also gives those who are called to be leaders and Expanders of the Holy Scriptures, to help us understand things that are hard for us to understand on our own, and to help us see things that we might not see on our own, and to apply those things to our lives. And it's not just their own human opinion. But it's the apostles teaching, as we find it in the New Testament, as well as the teaching of the prophets of the Old Testament that we hear when we go to church and hear the Word of God expounded. And you can't get that just from reading excellent sermons or from watching excellent preaching on TV, although that can be very valuable and helpful, too. But in a local situation. God has a local pastor with a word that he's given for you. And for this particular group of people. fellowship is so very important, the building up of each other in love, I need others, and they need me. And the way we interact at church in love in holding each other accountable, in building each other up in providing for each other's needs. This is an absolutely vital part of being part of a church, you find that if you're trying to start to charcoal fire, if you have just one chunk of charcoal, that thing goes out. If you've got them all together, and kind of firing each other up, they all get hot together. And fellowship plays that role. 

They're also crises in life where you just don't want to be on your own. I've known some sad situations where people left their church body found themselves really part of no church body. And then when a loved one died, came to me and asked me to do the funeral. In a sense, we were the only people that had any connection with him yet, but they had severed that connection. And then she while back, the person stopped going to church because he didn't like screens. A sad aftermath of that was that this man's son was killed in a car accident. And it was not the TV screen that came and visited him. It was We who had been his pastors, and those of us who had been part of his church, and he did end up coming back into the fellowship of believers at that point as well. But it was a very, very sad thing. 

Fellowship is very important. Another is the breaking of bread, the sharing of common meals, and that's part of fellowship, but also the breaking of bread at the Lord's Supper, Jesus gave us the Lord's Supper, the celebration of his giving of his body and of His blood for our salvation, and the regular celebration of holy communion of the Lord's Supper strengthens our faith. And that happens when people are together worshiping as church and then praying together. Of course, pray to the Lord anytime pray to the Lord on your own, pray to him at home with your family, but also when God's people are joined together at church in prayer with each other, and for each other, and for the wider needs of their community and nation in the world. Those prayers take on the added power as the spirit moves among the apostles teaching fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers, that's pretty simple, pretty basic, and absolutely necessary and essential, and those are reasons why we need Need to be part of members of a local church? And why we who are already leaders need to be cultivating a sense of the importance of church and evaluating our own church and say, Hey, do we got a lot of extras going on here that aren't all that important, that are distracting from what's really important. Let's get back to basics. 

Let's make sure we're teaching what the apostles taught. Let's make sure we've got a living healthy fellowship, let's celebrate communion often, and to build people up in and let's be people of prayer. Now, here's another question, not just why do you need a church, but why this particular church? Why stick with it? Once you're part of it, why not just switch whenever it seems to suit you better to switch? Let me just say that there may be times when it is best to switch one church to another. If one church is just teaching falsehood, or if it is just becoming a catastrophe, where everybody is at each other's throats, and the spirit of love, and of the Holy Spirit's power seems to have completely left the place, there may be a time to leave, or if you've just gotten stuck in a rut, and the Lord has something else. Or there are great reasons like going off to plant another congregation, or to carry out God's mission and the vision he's given you. There may be reasons why not to stick with a particular church. But I want to talk now about why you would stick with a particular congregation. One major reason is vision. A healthy church centers on God, and it shapes disciples to grow more and more like Jesus Christ. And this kind of vision is not a quick fix. It's not something that happens in a week or two, or in a month or two. It's a result of a long pursuit of maturity in Christ together. And part of that is getting to know each other better. And sharing that vision and encouraging each other in that vision for walking with the Lord. Closely related to that is simply love. Fellow members of this body that you've become part of are increasingly due to you. And you're increasingly due to them. We're committed to each other. And so even though there may be 14 Other good churches within driving distance, I'm staying with this church because it's my church. It's the place where I know people, they know me, and we love each other, and we don't have disposable, dispensable relationships, we love each other, and we stick together. So there you have it, why this particular church because we have a shared vision, and a shared love. 

Now I want to look with you in just a little more detail in Ephesians 4 about some of the ways that love and shared vision can mature in unity with a local body of believers. The Apostle Paul speaks of doing things with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now, how do you grow impatient? How do you grow impatient with people by getting upset with them, and by immediately bailing out on them, when at the first sign of trouble, you grow in patience, when you have to put up with something, the only way you ever grow more patient, the only way you ever become better at bearing with others is when there's something to bear with. You grow in maturity. In other words, when you have to put up with some stuff, and hopping from this church to that when every few months, you've never learned to become patient. You never learned to bear with one another in love. And you certainly don't learn the unity of the Spirit with a bond of peace.

The purpose of authority in the church is to equip for that kind of maturity. Why did God give apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers well, to equip the saints, for the work of ministry and for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, as a pastor, that is my primary calling is to help others become more mature in Jesus Christ, as an elder, that is the responsibility of elders. And if you want to know why it is so important, that we have leaders to be accountable to it is so that we can grow in maturity, so that they can lead us toward a fuller measure of the stature of the fullness of Jesus Christ. And you might say, well, I can grow that way, just on my own, says you. What does God say? God says He gave these leaders to help with that purpose. And it is very foolish of you or me or anybody else to say, we don't need anybody else. Even as a pastor, right? I can't say well, I'm a pastor. My job is studying the Bible. I need to grow in Christ and help the peons to grow up in Christ as well. That is, I need the elders of my church and the deacons of my church to hold me accountable to help me get more mature. So I'm not just trying to push my own way on everybody else, and I need the rest of the body as well. 

But the point of this passage is that authority is given to equip others for maturity and you're not going to grow to as much maturity in Christ if you just ignore the authority of a particular congregation. Maturity involves stability. We have this authority in our lives and grow more like crisis pulsa that will no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Now, there are parts of the Bible that encourage being childlike, childlike in our trust, in our sense of wonder in our humility. In our lack of pretense those areas, it's good to be childlike, but Don't be childish. Children are easily excited, Eh! and easily bored, easily upset, easily fooled. As mature believers, we are not to get too easily excited. The latest piece of music makes us think we're full of the Holy Spirit, because our emotions are easily swayed by music. Or we're easily bored. We're hearing the Word of God being expounded. But there weren't enough bells and whistles. We get riled real quickly. A grownups are not supposed to be changing their mood or their mind as quickly as little kids do. Paul says, We're to grow up so that we're not tossed about by every wind of doctrine, so that we're not unstable. But instead, we're mature and stable people. 

Speaking the truth and love unifies us and grows us up in Christ, Paul says, rather speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love, stay part of the same body of believers over the long haul. Because when you get long term relationships, you dare to speak the truth to each other, even when it's not always pleasant, and yet you love each other. So you're not necessarily just speaking those truths to hurt people's feelings. There are times where the truth builds up and makes us feel better. There are times when the truth kind of hurts for a while. And part of being in a body over a long period of time is you have these honest relationships. In a new situation, people are all kind of impressed with each other, and they're excited to get to know each other. And there's something fun about that. But it's when you've known each other about five years, and you don't have any illusions about each other. You know what you don't like about each other. You know what you love about each other, and you keep building each other up? Oh, by the way, it's when you forgive, when you deal with things that make you mad, and still don't sin that you get your triumphs over Satan having put away falsehood, let each of us speak the truth with his neighbor. For we're members of one another. You say I don't want to be a member of a church. Sorry about that. If you belong to Jesus Christ, you're a member, you're a member with others. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. 

Here's where you get to win your victories over Satan. Your victory is oversight and don't come when everything is going great and smoothly. Some of your greatest victories over Satan come when you are furious, and maybe even rightly furious, about something that has just happened or that someone has done. And yet you don't hold a grudge about it. You don't let the sun go down on your anger. You talk honestly and lovingly together and you convey forgiveness. And it is in forgiving and in showing grace that we defeat Satan let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as it's good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And when we're defeating Satan, we're also getting opportunities to live by the Spirit and display Grace again. The spirits greatest work is not just when you're having a warm fuzzy during your favorite moment of a worship service. Hey, those that may be the spirit and maybe a wonderful thing. But that's not the spirits greatest work. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. You're really in tune with the spirit when you're dealing with bitterness. 

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Your biggest opportunity to be like Jesus, and to express the grace of God working through the Holy Spirit in you your biggest opportunity is when you forgive when he leaves the moment, you're confronted with the possibility of forgiving, you've just blown your greatest chance to be like Jesus Christ. And you're not growing in grace when you stay and stick with people that you need to forgive, and sometimes they need to forgive you. Then you grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, sometimes there's a contrast that some people say there is between discipleship, helping believers to become more mature, and evangelism on the other hand, well, Dallas Willard says, the way to get as many people into heaven as you can, is to get heaven into as many people as you can, that is to follow the path of genuine spiritual transformation, or full through out of discipleship to Jesus Christ, when we're counting up results, says well, and we also need to keep in mind the multitudes of people who will not be in heaven, because they have never seen the reality of Christ in a living human being. 

So if we don't concentrate on helping people to grow to maturity, and to greater Christ's likeness, we may have a lot of butts in the seats in our churches, we may have big crowds there. But if none of them are growing toward Christ, like maturity, it's all going to start seeming like a shame after a while. When people are growing more and more like Jesus, then there'll be a greater attraction in their lives, for others who are still looking for the genuine reality of Jesus Christ. So evangelism, by all means, yes, but also the discipleship of believers to make them more Christ like. And when that discipleship and greater Christ's likeness is seen, then it will make our message more credible, as well. And that's all part of being part of the body of Christ and the part of the growing, and healthy and mature Body of Christ. Growing up as Christ's body. We need to do that, and we can't just be dropping out of church. 

The Bible says, Don't neglect getting together as some are in the habit of doing but get together and spur one another on to love and good deeds. It's a direct command from God and the book of Hebrews. And so we have an obligation from God not to just drop church completely and ditch it. We also shouldn't just be hopping around. And we don't want to encourage others to be hopping around. If you're planting a church, and you're working with people find out why they want to leave their previous church and join yours and find out whether it's a good reason to maybe talk with them about some of the issues that they have. But don't get into that mentality yourself and don't foster that mentality in others. Don't expect a perfect church yet. That is as a leader, sometimes you can get kind of starry eyed. And you think, oh, you know, I'm just so angry and upset because the church hasn't become what I thought it should be. It's not what it should be. Yet. If you want a perfect church, you better not join it. Because the moment you join, it won't be perfect anymore, because you're not perfect. And so, for those who are Christians looking for a church, don't expect to find a perfect one. Yet. If you're a leader, don't expect to start a perfect one. You're going to be dealing with a group of sinful people, in whose life the Lord God is working, but who has not yet perfected them. 

There is coming a day when Christ bride is made perfect when his body is spotless and pure. That day hasn't quite arrived yet. Do expect this do expect and commit to a church with a vision for New Birth leading to maturity in Christ, the church that knows people need to be born again. And those people need to grow up in Jesus, where God's truth is spoken. where God's love is shown. That's a place where we can grow together in Christ where church membership is not just a piece of paper, but a living reality, a joyous commitment and opportunity to grow in grace and to show each other the grace that God has shown us