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Signing Up

Or, The Privileges of Church Membership

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:12-26

Date: February 2, 2014

Speaker: Sean Higgins

We had a rip-roaring discussion yesterday morning with the men at our Life to Life leaders meeting regarding how weddings are a huge problem. We love marriage; it’s weddings that stink. God explicitly said marriage is His idea, His institution, His illustration of His own Son’s relationship with the Church. But weddings mess so many things up.

Weddings often put a fake front on weak commitment. Weddings provide an opportunity for parents to control their kids. Weddings waste so much money (that could go to the couple, or to missionaries), they usually waste huge amounts of energy, and are a colossal waste of the community’s time. Weddings don’t even guarantee faithfulness. A big wedding or an expensive wedding, the whitest-white dress, the best brilliant cut diamond on the purest platinum ring, do nothing to settle heart issues. Sometimes a wedding may cause the couple to completely miss the priority of the marriage covenant.

Why keep planing and funding weddings then? There is no verse that requires them. We who want to be biblical people ought to have clear verses to support our ceremonies.

Before I get any further, this is a message on church membership, as was our discussion yesterday. Also, I asked for the best arguments against weddings, so it’s not as if guys just wanted to hate. Also, the comparison is not about an equality between the promises a man and a woman make in marriage with the promise between a body part and the body in membership. The point of comparison belongs with the how we communicate what’s in our hearts.

We are more than thoughts, more than good intentions, more than answers to questions. We are persons. What we believe, the stories we tell, the lives we lead, and the rituals we engage in go together. It is possible to do it wrong, to be inconsistent, but it is not possible to do nothing. Doing nothing says something.

A wedding, for all the perilous cliffs of insanity, adorns the promises. A wedding provides a public platform to love marriage. A wedding makes a statement about image-bearing, about families coming together and a new family beginning. A wedding invites the community to celebrate, to slingshot the couple into their commitment. It invites the community to help and encourage the new family, giving greater accountability to the two vow-makers. A wedding puts up a sign about what we, as a people, believe is important.

All of us use signs, symbols, liturgy. Kneeling is liturgy. Prayer before meals is liturgy, so is dessert (or not) afterward. Covering your heart with your hand while saying the pledge of allegiance, standing up to sing the Star Spangled Banner, singing it before the Super Bowl, all these make statements. If someone doesn’t understand the statement, we take that as an opportunity to explain the significance, not as a reason to abandon the sign. The sign connects us together.

So church membership is signing up. I don’t mean signing like a signature on the dotted line. I mean that membership is like hoisting a flag. You can explain what the church is. Your life shows commitment to the church. And it is also possible for a liturgical statement to uphold your joining as well as the congregations affirmation of your joining. It may provoke questions from your kids or your extended family. What a great opportunity to explain. When someone else goes through it, it may rekindle your own warmth and responsibilities.

Last week we started a series about the big “B” and little “b” Body/body, the Church/church. Though they can be differentiated, they shouldn’t be separated. A Christian is a member of the universal Body and that should be visible in a local body. It may take different levels of formality, but a local church affirms the heavenly citizenship of her members. It is a weighty and privileged relationship.

What are the benefits of signing up? In other words, what are the privileges of membership? Or, Why Being a Member is AWESOME . This isn’t just a message that you should be a member or that it’s appropriate to be a member, but the privileges of membership.

There are usually some particular privileges that belong to local bodies. For example, some churches require (often at the preference of their insurance company) you to be a member to work with kids, from newborn through high school, 18 and under. Some churches share their prayer request only among officially identified members.

Church membership does brings with it a certain status and most of the best benefits are intangible.

1. Specialized Care

Church members (should) receive specialized care. Care means that members receive provision (fed and equipped) and protection (cared for and guarded), and specialized means that the care comes from leaders who are qualified and accountable.

Elders/overseers/pastors/shepherds provide concentrated and skilled care for the sheep. They shouldn’t be disconnected academic “experts” like PhDs. Nor should they be pragmatic “professionals” always watching the bottom line like CEOs. Yet, in a good church, those who lead and feed and guard should meet certain standards.

First, overseers should be qualified. According to 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9, pastors must demonstrate character. They must be recognized for integrity in aptly (appropriately, consistently) living what they aptly teach. They follow and model the counsel they provide.

Second, overseers are accountable, and there are at least four levels of accountability.

Leaders are accountable to God first. Hebrews 13:17 exhorts Christians, “obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” Who is that account given to? They will answer to God for how they care. Acts 20:28 exhorts leaders to “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.” Does God care about His sheep that He sent His own Son to die for? How His leaders treat His people is a big deal to Him. They will give an account for how they watched over the souls of those for whom Christ died.

They are also held to strict accountability as teachers (James 3:1, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness”). They will answer God for what they say and rightly dividing His Word to feed His people.

Leaders are accountable to the other elders. The ones who are qualified should (though it does not always happen) be paying attention to one another. We have an annual process of review before one another.

Leaders are accountable to the entire church. This is part of the reason that we invited all the men to read Biblical Eldership and talked through it, chapter by chapter, for over a year so that everyone (who wanted) would know what qualifies and disqualifies an elder.

Paul instructed Timothy, “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” (1 Timothy 5:19–20, ESV). A congregation has the obligation not to submit to certain types of gospel-denying pastors. Paul wrote Galatians to correct the church for listening to false teachers. If the flock can’t get repentance or get him fired the flock should leave.

Leaders are accountable before the entire community. One of the qualifications is that an overseer “must be well thought of outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:7). Everyone is watching.

There are benefits of, and even need for, peer care. The New Testament is full of mutual, “one another” responsibilities (i.e., love, instruct, care for, comfort, serve, encourage, stir up). In addition, the Holy Spirit convicts as a sort of self-diagnosis, or better, God in us helps us to examine our own souls and provides prescription through illuminating the Word. It’s also true that no shepherd other than Jesus is perfectly knowledgeable, let alone always available, thoughtful, truthful, and tender. Shepherds may hurt the flock, even if unintentionally.

However, why would you not want to see a doctor who was recognized as qualified to help your health? WebMD is great. But can it compare to someone who’s given their life to listening and observing and studying and then helping others be healthy? And wouldn’t you also prefer one who was accountable, unable to do “whatever” experimental treatment he wanted without consequence?

God has given pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-12). When they do their work well, they save both themselves and their hearers (1 Timothy 4:16). They are called, charged, trained, equipped, and accountable for the souls of the sheep.

Why wouldn’t you want to follow a qualified, accountable, willing, and eager example (cf. 1 Peter 5:2-4)? And how do you expect them to know that they are responsible for you unless you identify yourself as part of their flock? Teachers have a class roll; they know who they are supposed to teach. Additionally, because they see the students day after day, they are better able to instruct according to observed strengths and weaknesses and usually do so from growing personal affection for the students.

There ought to be a way of “signing up” with local flock for the sake of receiving specialized care.

2. Full Body Life

Men were never created to be alone from the beginning (Genesis 2:18), and Christians are never saved to be alone either. Yes, Christians are saved individual by individual. No one is saved because they are a church member. However, if you are a saved person, you are a member of a bigger body. We, “though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another” (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:27). The spiritual reality of our interconnectedness can be ignored or disliked but it can’t be undone.

In the fullness of body life we are learning to reflect the eternal, joyful, intimate realities of the Trinity. In the church, we relate to others who are different than us but who are equally valuable before God. In some sense, others are more valuable to us because we are helped by being connected to those who are gifted differently. This is an advantage to us in three ways.

First, you are needed by others. No matter what sort of gift or service, no matter how strong or weak, “to each has been given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). That’s reality. The Holy Spirit is working through you in some way for us! “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose” (12:18). We can’t do what you can do! We need you! For example, the eye shouldn’t feel “forced” to perform but rather open up to the privilege of doing its part. The eye shouldn’t think it’s a burden to keep the rest of the (stupid) body from running into walls. Instead, the eye should be excited every morning to open wide to help.

Second, you need others. Just as others can’t do what you can do, so you can’t do what others can. You are made to be benefitted and blessed by receiving encouragement and service from others. They see when you stand, they sing when you weep, they admonish when you’re idle, encourage when you’re fainthearted, and help when you’re weak (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Third, together, we live in shared sorrow and joy. When we actively do our part (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:14-20, no member of the body can say he isn’t needed) and when we appreciate others doing their part (12:21-24, no part of the body can say it doesn’t need another part), then there is “no division in the body” and “the members have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, then all rejoice together” (12:25-26). Why wouldn’t you want the privilege of diffused suffering (spreading out the intensity)? And why wouldn’t you want the privilege of compounded rejoicing (multiplying the intensity).

”Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Proverbs 18:1). Likewise, a member of the body separates itself from its own body to its own harm. Why wouldn’t you want to have your strengths fill weakness and your weakness covered by others’ strength?

Full body life is Trinitarian, it is very good, it is a privilege. “Signing up” for membership helps everyone identify who they are supposed to be serving for.

Conclusion

Membership cannot, by itself, fix anything. It probably won’t turn a nominal participant into a committed member. But it is an attempt, from wisdom based on biblical implications, to help disciples grow. Membership compliments a lifestyle of commitment to the church with symbol/ritual, it does not question it.

The church is the most glorious GMO on the planet (Grace Modified Organism). God plants us next to each other on purpose.

Christians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other’s roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other. (John Bunyan, Christian Behavior, quoted in Brown, 173)

See more sermons from the Membership series.