Church Membership
By Maurice Haynes
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Perhaps the most common way of saying who we are as disciples is to speak of our church membership. "I am a member of the North Macomb Church of Christ." Or, "It has been twenty-one years since I became a member of the church." Or again, "I just decided that I couldn't continue at my work and be a good church member." And the most crucial question which some of us can think to ask another is, "What church are you a member of?"
The point of this essay is that such talk is symptomatic of our erroneous conception of what the church is all about. Now do not misunderstand me. I am not concerned merely for the imprecision of our theological language but rather that we are unaware of what it is that God is doing with us in our life together.
Behind our way of speaking is an understanding of the church as a religious organization, or more exactly, as the one religious organization which teaches "the truth" (i.e., the true system of doctrine) and whose worship and government follows the revealed pattern. We apparently feel that the church is one among many religious organizations, the only difference being that the church is the correct one. We are, we say, the true church. The problem of man then becomes the job of identifying and gaining membership in this unique religious organization.
It is obvious that the church, in some sense at least, is a religious organization. The church does not exist apart from some sort of organizational expression. But are its organizational characteristics really primary pre-requisites for its existence? Does conformity to a proper organizational structure make the church the church? Does it really get to the heart of the matter to say that the church is an organization, even a religious one?
The church cannot be properly understood by fitting it right off into the category of a religious organization. It eludes such classification because it is something much more. To look at the church as a
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No company of people, with however genuine a religious concern and regardless of the sincerity and thoroughness of their endeavors to follow the organizational patterns of the apostolic community, can turn themselves into the church. And in that inability lies the distinction between the church and a religious organization.
The church is the work of God. It is not, in essence, a group of people who have committed themselves to a system of beliefs (a creedal community); a system of morality (an ethical society); or even to a leader. For the church cannot be defined by its human characteristics (though it cannot be defined apart from them either); to do so is to ensure its perversion. The church must rather be defined in terms of what God has done and is doing with that group of people.
Thus the church is the new humanity which God is creating. It is that people who have been welded by God into a community through His efforts to bring them back into right relationship with Himself and give new dimensions and potentials to their life. And so the church can be defined by keeping one's vision focused upon the activity of God. Whenever you see a clear sign of the working of God within a people, you may know that "the kingdom of God has come upon you."
Let us be done with all of this talk about church membership. It is inappropriate and misleading. And it has encouraged many of us to seek for the center of our identity as disciples in our relationship to a religious organization. This way of speaking is foreign to scripture. When Paul calls Christians "members" he is referring not to their "membership" in a religious organization, but to their intimate organic relationship with Christ and each other.
Editor's Note. Maurice Haynes labors with the North Macomb Church of Christ in Romeo, Michigan, and the above is an article from the bulletin of that congregation. You may address the author at Box 304, Romeo, Michigan.