by Hal Miller
The idea of "membership" we use in Salem Community Church is different than the one often used by other churches and groups. We would like to explain how and why.
The common idea of membership in our society, the one which we all begin with, has mostly to do with clubs and organizations. It means that you pay your dues, vote in meetings, and have your name on a list somewhere. In short, you have a formal tie to an organization. Sometimes, people lose interest in or commitment to the organization and so lessen their involvement. In this way, it is possible to have a formal tie without much experiential involvement. One can officially be a member without functioning as one. As a result, organizations have to distinguish "active" from "inactive" members. Some people may remain on the "membership list" while hardly participating at all.
Unfortunately, much of American Christianity shares this general idea of membership. So, it is not uncommon to find churches with lengthy membership lists which cannot fill three pews on a Sunday morning or come up with a quorum for a business meeting. They have large numbers of "inactive members" and appear to many to be merely religiously-oriented social clubs.
Many other churches have reacted to this dismal state of affairs by opting out of the idea of membership altogether and maintaining a completely non-formal "whoever happens to be there is a member" attitude. Unfortunately, this reaction has at least as many problems as the common idea of membership.
If we want to take membership seriously, avoiding both the way our society tends to trivialize the idea and the non-formal reaction to that trivialization, we need a different idea of what membership means. When Paul speaks of membership, his idea is not one of being part of an organization, but of being part of a body:
To be a member in the body of Christ is to be concretely involved in a common life with the other members of the body, to participate in community. It is to hurt when another hurts and to be glad when another is blessed. To take being members of one another in the local body of Christ seriously means seeking to intertwine our lives, comfort, encourage, and hold each other accountable so that we can grow up into Christ and care for one another (Eph. 4:15-16).
In a healthy body, each part functions to serve the good of the whole. Thus, membership in a body is very different from membership in a club. A club might easily have inactive members but a body cannot. In a body, an inactive member is either dead or atrophied.
Further, membership in clubs is based on the similarities and common interests of the members (such as discussing computers, playing bridge, or riding horses). Although Christians are to be like-minded, however, membership in a body emphasizes diversity. It is precisely because the eye is not the ear that each needs the other. In a body it is important to be inter-dependent precisely as different parts. Thus, in the church, we can be membered even though we might be very unlike each other. Indeed, we seek to appreciate and encourage the variety of each of our gifts and callings.
God calls his people to be concretely membered in a local expression of the spiritual body of Christ. The local body is a place where the mutual ministry and common mission which belong to the church can take place concretely and practically. Membership in a local body is rooted in membership in the universal body of Christ. But the full experience of membership in that universal body is impossible without membership in a local body. They should never be confused or separated, for each requires the other.
The implications of being a member, in this different sense of the word, cannot be summarized in a list of rules or obligations. But they can be fairly easily described. To put it in a sentence: If you are a member, you are responsible. The church is not something "out there" which can be spoken of in the abstract or criticized as if you were not involved. The members are the church because the church is a body, not a club. What it means to be a member is to be responsible for the life and health of the other members and to contribute to the growth of the body as a whole. That means if the church has a problem and you are a member, it is your problem.
To be a member is to be responsible and active. Concretely, this means several things. First, it means to be in a covenant relationship with the other members (as expressed in the Description of our Covenant). Second, it means to be concerned for and actively involved in the direction of the body as a whole, through prayer and participation in consensus decision-making. Third, being a member of the body means putting your resources - time, energy, money, insight, and so on - at the disposal of the Lord in the body, for mission work and to meet human need both within and outside of the church. Fourth, membership means being willing to be accountable to each other for our Christian discipleship and for the many decisions we make that effect one another (Eph. 5:21). Fifth, being a member means actively participating in the concrete activities of the body, in home church meetings and network meetings, as well as - where appropriate - church moves, pastoral concerns meetings, the Fall retreat, and so on.
Being a member of a community is not defined by economic sharing or geographical proximity, per se. Nonetheless, it turns out that being members of a body can be nurtured by both. Those who live close together can tell you how important proximity is in building community. And, those who don't can tell you that community requires extra effort to work over a distance.
It has been our experience that the more patterned ways in which we bind ourselves together (by, for example, sharing resources, working together on projects, or living close together), the deeper our whole understanding of membership in the body becomes. Physical proximity turns out to be a basis for many other ways of being bound together, largely because less energy and planning is needed to share a common life. Geographic proximity means that community doesn't always have to be "scheduled," but can happen as a natural part of daily life.
While membership is not conditioned upon where one lives, where one lives does turn out to have a considerable impact on your ability to make membership a practical reality. Therefore, each member needs to consider where they live quite carefully because although American society doesn't have much difficulty being part of a commuter culture, the body of Christ finds it a chore.
We have found through experience that becoming a member of the body seems to have two essential parts: an "official" process and a more diffuse "informal" process. The first is easier to describe, but the second is more important.
The official process involves meeting together with others in a "membership forum" to discuss the church's history, vision, ideals, practices, expectations, and so on. Such a formal discussion is necessary and must be taken seriously; it is important, for example, that new members attend all of these meetings. But the membership forum is not sufficient for the process of membering.
The other part, the informal process, is more significant in becoming integrated in the life of the body. This informal process basically amounts to "hanging out." Involving yourself in the lives of people in the body - sharing meals, projects, sports, discussions, outings - allows the Spirit of God to intertwine their lives with yours. This process involves getting to know the others in the community and opening yourself up to be known by them. In order for people to make a significant commitment to you, they need to have some personal sense that you are serious about wanting to be membered with them. And there is simply no other way to do this than to spend time with them.
Naturally, you will not be able to do this with everyone, and you need not. But you need to involve yourself with enough people that you become "known" in a general way to most in the community. You will then become an unofficial member before you take the "official" step of membership.
When all this is said and done, depending on what you invest in it, you should expect this informal process to take the good part of a year. So, although the official process of membering can eventually be done in a series of meetings, the more informal part will take much longer.
Although we take membership very seriously, we also recognize that our little body is not the final place of membership for many people. Some may be membered here for their whole lives. Others will be here for a shorter time. We know that God's callings and intentions for our lives are numerous. We want to affirm the diversity of God's callings on us without sacrificing the seriousness of membership or the emotional and spiritual investments that are necessary on everyone's part in order to make membership more than a word.
Because "un-membering" is a decision which affects the body, it needs to be worked through with the body. In general, the same ideas we use about decision-making as a whole apply to the decision to un-member. Open, responsible communication toward discerning God's will, not unilateral announcements, should be the norm. Our experience is that, when this has been rightly carried through, it is both a sad and a joyful process. The body comes to grips with the fact of loss and goes through a grieving process. And the person un-membering comes to know that, even though it hurts, they are in God's will and the body is blessing their departure.
Active, responsible, participatory membership in the church-community is an important means of Christian discipleship. For this reason, we try to take membership in the body seriously, working to intertwine our lives in loving, covenanted relationships. The ultimate goal of this endeavor is (by God's grace and to the best of our ability) to pursue, in our individual lives and our corporate life, the kingdom of God - that is, the realization of God's will on earth as in heaven.
Version 3.2
As of 26 December 1996