Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12–14, 27
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé

What is Church Membership?

Please turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12:12–14, if you would. Now, typically if you join us for worship on a Sunday morning, we are making our way verse-by-verse through some book of the Bible. We just finished the book of Hebrews together, and Lord willing, we will open the Gospel of Matthew in a few weeks.

But for four Sundays, we are taking a brief excursion from that pattern to work through an important issue for our church—the doctrine of local church membership.

For many reasons related to the history of this church, we have not to date had formal church membership. Several years ago, the elders came to the firm conviction that we needed to correct that, and so began a long process of working through the how and the when of local church membership. Over the next four weeks, Lord willing, we will take up four main questions:

1. What is church membership?
2. What are the duties of the church officers in the local church?
3. What are the duties of the congregation in the local church?
4. What is this local church?

And then on that fourth Sunday in the series, July 19th, we will have a business meeting, where we will go into some of the nuts and bolts for how to join this local church in formal membership, and to answer any questions you might have. So that said, let’s get to work on that first part this morning, working on the question: What is church membership? Look with me at 1 Corinthians 12:12–14, then we’ll ask for the Lord’s help and get to work. This is the Word of the Living God:

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 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. For the body does not consist of one member but of many… Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” -1 Corinthians 12:12–14, 27

Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith.

Three Parts by Way of Answer

So our question this morning is simply: What is local church membership? We will answer that question in three parts:

First, I’ll give a definition of local church membership.

Second, I’ll provide a defense of the concept of local church membership from Scripture.

Third, I’ll try to deal with some of the more common objections to local church membership that you might have yourself or maybe that you’ve heard elsewhere.

What is Membership?

So first, let’s get a working definition of local church membership so we know what we’re talking about. On a fundamental level, when we use the word “member” with respect to the church, we are using a biblical word for a biblical thing: As we read in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes,

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 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. For the body does not consist of one member but of many… Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
-1 Corinthians 12:12–14, 27

The literal meaning of the word “member” in this concept is that of “body part,” and Paul is using it as part of a larger metaphor of a human body as a picture of the people of God in Christ.

This is one of Paul’s favorite metaphors for the people of God. He elsewhere refers to the Lord Jesus as “…the head of the body, the Church.” So to Paul, the “body” he’s referring to is the church, of which Christ is head.

But as we’ll see in the second part of this sermon, you can’t meaningfully be a member of whole body of Christ—what we might call the universal church, that is, every one of the people of God from every time and place, including those who have gone before us and who are now absent from the body, but present with the Lord—without being a member of a local body of Christ, the local expression and visible gathering of God’s people under the leadership God has ordained for his people.

When the biblically ordained leadership of a local body of believers says, “You are a member of this local church,” what they’re saying is that you are actually a member of Christ’s universal church, and you have committed to being a member of that universal church in this local ekklesia—which is the Greek word for church—or “called out assembly” of believers, gathered under biblically qualified leadership.

So we could say by way of definition: Local church membership is the pronouncement, “This person is a member of Christ’s Kingdom,” by a biblically authorized agent of the Lord Jesus. It is the formal, acknowledged relationship of a member of the church universal to a church local.

In other words, when we’re saying that you are a member of a local church, we’re saying that the leadership of that church affirms that you are a Christian—and that a particular local assembly is where you will be a Christian.

As we take up a biblical defense of the concept of local church membership, we’ll see how this concept arises from the Scriptures.

A Biblical Defense of Membership

Now, there are many ways of defending local church membership from the Scriptures, and many texts we could look at. Each reason we’ll look at could easily be its own sermon. That said, we’ll look at four lines of reasoning for why establishing and maintaining a robust local church membership is a biblical concept:

1. Paul immediately applies the member/body metaphor to the local assembly in 1 Corinthians 12.

The context of Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 12, in fact, most of the whole section between chapters 11 to 14, is instruction of how the local assembly of Christians in Corinth were to function in their assembling.

In 1 Corinthians 11:18, he makes it clear that he is talking in all of this about “…when you come together as a church.”

To Paul, the metaphorical application of a human body with different parts isn’t only about the universal church, but also each local expression of it. Part of the wisdom and providence of God in managing the world is to ordain where and when each of us will live, and to gift us accordingly so that the local churches in every place won’t lack needed parts of the body.

None of what he says in these chapters makes any kind of sense in an abstract, universal-church-only sort of way, because it would be impossible to actually obey his commands outside of membership in an actual local congregation of Christians.

2. Hebrews 13:17, 1 Peter 5:1–5, Acts 20:28, and other texts assume you know who your leaders are, and that the elders know whom their flock consists of.

Hebrews 13:17 reads,

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
-Hebrews 13:17

Do you hear the particularity of that language? He says to obey your leaders. Without local church membership how does that work? Who are your leaders? Are you, for example, commanded to submit to all the elders within a certain geographical radius of yourself?

If membership in the church is only a universal thing—as in, the only real membership that means anything is in the universal church—then how do you obey this passage?

It gets even more clear in the instruction of the New Testament to the elders of churches:

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood…”
-Acts 20:28
“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight…’”
-1 Peter 5:1–2a
“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
-Hebrews 13:17

These instructions to the elders of local churches clears away a certain kind of objection against formalizing church membership.

Because you might object, “Well, of course it’s talking about the leaders of the local church I attend. But that’s all it’s talking about—the church I happen to attend. There’s no need for there to be formal membership there.”

But think about the elders of a church. Who are they responsible to give an account for? Whose souls are we watching over? Anyone who happens to attend on a Sunday? What about someone who comes once a month? What about someone who only comes because his wife comes? Will I have to give an account for his soul?

No. The souls we are watching over and will give an account for are those who are members of the local church. They are those who have said, “You are our elders. We will submit to you. We expect you to shepherd us like Christ.” And that brings us to one of the core parts of the local church pastoral ministry, which underscores the need for local church membership. Number three:

3. The way the Scriptures describe church discipline requires meaningful local church membership, where the flock has agreed to submit to the leaders of a church for discipline, and the leaders know who is subject to church discipline.

See, for each sphere of governing authority that God has built into his one, all-encompassing Kingdom, there are leaders who are authorized to administer certain sanctions:

The family government is given the rod of discipline to correct his children.

The civil government, God’s political ministers, are given the sword to wield to punish the wrongdoer.

The church is given the Keys of the Kingdom to pronounce the forgiveness of sin—entrance into God’s Kingdom—and excommunication, the removal of a person from the visible Church in church discipline.

Church discipline requires meaningful local church membership that is defined, where the elders know who is in the flock of God among them, so that they can keep a watch over their souls, even up to and including church discipline. Two passages I’ll read for us briefly:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”
-Matthew 18:15–17

Who is “the church” here? The universal church? No! It’s the local church to which all parties are presumed to belong. Paul makes this even clearer in 1 Corinthians 5:12–13,

“For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’”
-1 Corinthians 5:12–13

How does a local church obey this instruction? How do they purge someone from amongst them? Again, in context Paul is talking about actual situations in the Corinthian church. Verse 4 of chapter 5 sets the context for this instruction as “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present…”

And the result of the removal of a person from that assembly is “…not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.”

This is what I mean by the “Keys of the Kingdom.” In Matthew 16, Jesus told the foundational church Apostles “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And in John 20:23, he told them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

What does all that mean? It means that the end of the process of church discipline—which, remember, is something given to the whole of a local church, not just the elders—is excommunication, where a person is pronounced by the church in general and the elders of that church in particular as being an unbeliever.

They are removed from the church. They are not forgiven. They may claim Christ, but in their unrepentance have shown that they are not of Christ.

This can only be properly expressed through local church membership. Who are we—and I mean the elders of this church, currently Joshua, Dan, Kevin, and myself—to practice church discipline for? Anyone who sits under my teaching in some way? That would be impossible. Lots of people come on Sundays and listen to the preaching of this church. Even more people listen to it online. We can’t possibly hold those people to a meaningful accountability to obey the Law of Christ.

The answer is easy: Local church members, whom we have affirmed as such after speaking with them and walking some important questions about their life and doctrine.

4. The way Paul describes practical and financial care for the sheep requires meaningful church membership.

I’ll be very brief on this one, but in places like 1 Timothy 5:3–16, Paul tells us how to honor and provide for widows who are truly widows and other needy Christians in the body, and then moves into explaining how the local church is to provide financially for the elders, the ministers of the gospel, in their congregation.

Again, without meaningful local church membership, this is just not possible. Who is responsible to which widow? Which Christians are responsible to provide for which pastors and ministers of the gospel?

In fact the bottom line is this: You simply can’t obey all of the various commands to you as a Christian without meaningful church membership. It is assumed in a thousand different instructions, both to the flock and her leaders.

Objections Considered

Let’s briefly take up a few objections that you may have either heard or even held. Number one,

1. The LDS Church has shaped many people’s concept of church membership in very damaging ways. Wouldn’t we want to avoid unnecessary obstacles for former Mormons to come to faith and participation in the true Church?

The LDS Church—because it is a false church with a false God, false Christ, and false gospel—can only offer slavery, never freedom.

So its perversion of church membership—a thing which ought to bring great fruitfulness and freedom—can only bring slavery to its members.

But listen: When a false religion corrupts a thing, we don’t abandon that thing, we take it back and walk in it in obedience to the Lord Jesus. Church membership is our thing. It belongs to the true church, to the true people of God.

We will not abandon church membership due to LDS corruption anymore than we will abandon the symbol of the cross because it offends the average Mormon or any more than we will abandon biblical teaching on human sexuality because it offends the sodomites.

2. The Church loses its potency the more it is organized. The Church should be organic, not organized.

There is a sub-current of Rousseauian romanticism that runs under American culture—the belief, often unconscious, that organic is better than organized, the forest is better than the farm, that the Native American tribe is the ideal state of human society.

One way this tends to come out is in the church is in pithy maxims like “It’s not a religion; it’s a relationship,” or “I love Jesus, but not the Church,” or “I just want to go back to the simplicity of the early Church.”

Ok, so in order:

Actually, it is a religion, not just a relationship. Sorry to break it to you, but the Apostle James says as much: True religion is caring for widows and orphans. If you’re a Christian, you’re in a religion. It has rule and authority and hierarchy and sanctions and law and representation and more.

And no, you can’t love Jesus but not the Church, because the Church is the bride of Jesus. Christ loves his Bride! Do you have better discernment than Christ? Fools talk like that, not Christians.

And as for the simplicity of the early Church—do you mean the one with organized local bodies, official ecclesiastical governing authorities like elders and deacons, that counted attendance, exercised formal excommunication, sent missionaries, did fundraising for various causes, and held councils of high leaders and church authorities to determine doctrinally binding standards for the whole church? Yeah, all of that is just the book of Acts.

Now don’t hear me wrong: The Church is not to be run as if it were a business or corporation. We are not to adopt our terminology and standards from the logistics wing of the local crony-capitalism monopoly—we’re not a spiritual Amazon dot com.

But the Church is to be highly organized, because the Scriptures require it both by explicit command and by good and necessary consequence of explicit commands.

The church doesn’t lose its power when it is organized according to biblical standards; it loses its power when it bends the knee to idols, including the very American idol of total autonomy and man-as-a-law-to-himself.

3. I have direct access to the Lord Jesus. I don’t need elders and church gatherings and deacons and formal processes. I belong to the universal church. Why do I need formal relationship with the local?

Yes, you do have direct access to the very throne room of God, to the very feet of the Lord Jesus. The false Roman Catholic Church may set up priests and saints as barriers between you and Christ, but not the true Church.

You do have direct access to Christ, and that makes the question plain: Will you obey Jesus?

Because you can’t do that without submission to real, qualified elders. You can’t do that without robust participation in the worship and ministry of a real ekklesia, a real assembly of Christians rooted in a place, people with names you know and faces you see and voices you hear singing next to you. Related to this objection might be something like…

4. I can participate in the local church without the need of formal membership—in fact, I have been for years right here!

That’s true. I’m not saying that there’s something magical about the formal agreement between church and members that all of the sudden creates Christian maturity out of the void. The structure of formal membership isn’t the point, the thing that grows inside of the structure is.

Very simply, formal church membership is a helpful trellis for the living vine of the church to grow on. It helps bring focus and clarity to what it is that we’re saying we’re doing here and how we aim to do it.

As pastors, we have many times over the previous years felt the lack that results from not having formal membership. It makes it more difficult to know who it is that makes up that group—the flock of God among you—that we are to shepherd.

We believe that this will help us to shepherd you better. So if you are a Christian who calls this local assembly your home, we are asking you to be a member.

Looking Ahead

So remember: Local church membership is the pronouncement, “This person is a member of Christ’s Kingdom,” by a biblically authorized agent of the Lord Jesus. It is the formal, acknowledged relationship of a member of the church universal to a church local.

In the next few weeks, Lord willing, I will aim to unfold in more specific terms the duties, responsibilities, and privileges that attend, or come with, church membership. We’ll talk about the duties of a member to the church and the church to the members.

As we do that, I believe you will see in even greater detail why it will be helpful for this congregation to have formal membership.