biblelighthouse
Puritan Board Junior
Originally posted by Scott Bushey
Joseph,
What kind of membership do they have?
I'm not sure what "kinds" of membership there are . . . I thought a church either had membership, or it didn't. Mine doesn't.
Frankly, the whole idea of "membership" is a little foreign to me. I know certain denominations practice it, but I'm not sure what the Biblical basis for it would be.
Just for example: Scott, you profess Christ, and of course I believe that the way you live is probably consistent with your profession. Thus, suppose you moved to McKinney and decided to start attending McKinney Bible Church. Since you are a Christian, we would count you as one of us, and you would be immediately welcome. There would never be a point where you would have to "switch membership" from some other church to ours. As far as we are concerned, if you trust Christ, then you are "one of us" the day you walk in the door . . . you don't have to take a "membership class", or fill out a form, or renounce membership in any other local church.
The body of Christ is one. But it is divided into various local bodies. As long as you give us good reason to believe you are a member of the worldwide church, we don't see any Scriptural reason to make up some sort of "membership roll" at our church.
Nevertheless, there are of course practical considerations. If it's your first day at our church, you obviously couldn't immediately be a deacon, elder, missionary, or Sunday school teacher. There is obviously a higher standard of decisioning necessary for choosing people for teaching positions. But other than that, you're just as much "one of us" from the beginning as you are a year later. The body of Christ is one.