Church membership is a concept that not many people are very familiar with. Even those who grew up in the church may not have a solid understanding of what it truly means to be a church member. For a while, I’d say membership was on the back burner for me, but in reality, it hadn’t even made it out of the fridge yet. My mindset for so long was “I’ll figure out what membership is and if I want to be a member eventually…” and then I didn’t address it for years.

I think because we aren’t sure about what church membership entails, we falsely assume it has little importance. Let’s take a moment to remove the fog and begin to see the beauty and importance of something that is often overlooked in Christian culture.

What is church membership?

I think when we hear the word “membership” it can be easy to assume that becoming a church member is like joining a club. Like taking up a voluntary extracurricular activity. Or signing up for rewards at a restaurant you go to fairly regularly. 

What if we broadened our view of the church? The local and global church is not a club, it is an embassy. An embassy represents a country and its interests within the borders of another country. The church represents the kingdom of heaven within the confines of Earth. As citizens of heaven, we are foreigners in this world and representatives of our King. And the church is a place where we can find refuge and recognition. It can affirm who is truly a citizen of heaven and who is not. We actually have a podcast about this where we go more in depth about the church as an embassy. I highly recommend listening to it!

Embassies carry the authority of the home country. The church carries the authority of Jesus. This means we don’t treat our citizenship like joining a club; we see it as a form of submission. We willingly submit to the local church because when we give ourselves to Christ, we give ourselves to His people too. It’s a package deal. 

The church is also a family. We are adopted as sons and daughters into the Father’s family, which means we enter a sibling relationship with each other. This goes beyond the relationship you have with the friend that comes over every day after school. As a family, you love and provide for each other in a committed way that differs from any other relationship we can have. We also have a podcast about the church as family!

So what does church membership actually look like? It is all about the church taking specific responsibility for you and you for the church. The church body formally affirms your profession of faith and baptism as legit. You formally submit your discipleship to the service and authority of the body. And it promises to give oversight to your discipleship. 

Are you starting to see how this is more than an extracurricular activity to take up? Church membership plays a major role in your submission to Christ’s authority and directly influences how you grow as a disciple of Jesus. 

How do members submit and commit to a church?

There are 8 different ways church members can submit to a local church:

• Publicly: we formally identify with Jesus and His people by joining the church that will regularly receive the Lord’s Supper.

• Physically/geographically: we gather regularly with the body and even decide to live geographically close to the church.

• Socially: we form life-giving friendships that push us to be more like Jesus and we humbly step out of our comfort zone to befriend those who aren’t like us.

• Affectionately: we devotedly love our church family by rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn. 

• Financially: we steward our money by sharing with those in need and giving generously to the church.

• Vocationally: we prioritize being involved in the church over advancing our own careers. 

• Ethically: we seek ethical instruction, counsel, accountability, and discipline from our church on matters that are addressed by God’s Word. 

• Spiritually: we exercise our spiritual gifts in service to the community, build each other up in the faith, and pray for each other.

When members of a church submit to each other in this way, we grow as beacons of light in a dark world, but we do so together, which amplifies our radiance. How much more does an entire campfire burn than one log by itself? This is what it means to live a life “worthy of the gospel”: to be of “one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 2:27). Our unity in humble submission to one another stands in stark contrast to the prideful divisiveness of the world. And that speaks magnitudes about the strength of the Savior who binds us together. 

If you are interested in learning more about church membership at King’s Hill, we would love to meet with you and tell you more! You can click here, fill out the form, and check “becoming a member”.

I also recommend reading “Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus” by Jonathan Leeman. You can get this book for free at our Resource Table on Sunday mornings!