I believe in church membership. I believe in membership as a practical matter that allows a church to function well. But even more so, I believe in membership as a biblical matter that allows a church to faithfully follow the Scriptures.

I suppose we ought to define our term. While acknowledging that membership can vary from church to church and context to context, the essential core is some kind of a formal agreement between the institution of a local church and the people who make up that church—an agreement that these individuals belong to that church in a way others do not. Hence, you are free to visit Grace Fellowship Church and participate in its worship services, but we will regard you a little differently than we regard the members. For example, you will not be able to conduct the business of the church and neither will you be permitted to participate in all of the church’s ministries. Some privileges and responsibilities are the exclusive domain of the members—those who are formally affiliated with the church.

With that in mind, let me offer some reasons why I believe church membership is a crucial practice for a healthy church.

Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to other Christians. The New Testament is replete with instructions on how Christians are to relate to other believers. Yet many of these commands can either only be carried out or can best be carried out in local contexts. You may be able to bear my burdens from a thousand miles away, but those who are closer are much more able. And so membership answers this question: Who are the people I am especially called to love? Or who am I primarily meant to serve with the gifts God has given me? It narrows the answer from the entire global church to one specific congregation. To become a member of a church is to say that these are the people God has most explicitly called me to love, serve, and pray for. These people are my “one another.”

Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to his spiritual leaders. Hebrews 13:17, for example, instructs Christians to “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” Are Christians to obey and submit to all Christian leaders? Or are they to obey and submit to particular Christian leaders? It makes the most sense to understand this command as local, as saying that Christians are to submit to and obey the leaders of their own local church. This means, of course, that they must be formally associated with that church.

Church membership makes sense of a pastor’s obligation to his church. All Christians are called to obey and submit while elders or pastors (words I use interchangeably) are called to keep watch—and to keep watch in such a way that they are prepared to give an account to God for the souls that have been entrusted to them. Whose souls will God demand an account of? Will every pastor be responsible for every Christian in the world? Or perhaps every Christian who walks through the doors of his church? It seems intuitive that pastors will be responsible for the souls of those who formally place themselves under their care. Church membership makes sense of all of these relationships—Christian to Christian, Christian to pastor, and pastor to Christian.

Church membership protects Christians. Christians walk a perilous path in this world and face the fierce enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Little wonder, then, that God has given Christians pastors to watch over them and guard them. Yet in most churches, pastors only consider themselves responsible for the people who formally associate themselves with that church. Christians who will not join the membership of a church fail to have God’s appointed overseers keeping watch over their souls.

Church membership guards the Lord’s Supper. Let’s set aside the matter of how a church welcomes visitors to the Lord’s Supper and focus instead on the people who regularly attend that church. We all acknowledge it is a grave matter when a church treats the Lord’s Supper flippantly and fails to keep people from “eating and drinking judgment on themselves.” Thus most churches follow some kind of a pattern in which an individual must be baptized (in baptistic churches) or make a public profession of faith (in paedobaptist churches) before they can participate in the Lord’s Supper. Typically and traditionally, that baptism or profession also begins with (or expands upon) becoming a member of the church. Participating in the Lord’s Supper is a Christian’s joy and responsibility and one that is rightly viewed as being bound to membership and protected by it.

Church membership makes sense of church discipline. Church discipline is a kind of measure of last resort that is meant to give a professed Christian one final opportunity to see the gravity of their sin and to repent of it. When carried out properly, and when an individual remains unrepentant, church discipline results in excommunication—a person being removed from the church. More specifically, the individual is removed from membership in the church. While in many cases they can and should still attend the church’s gatherings where they can hear the gospel, they can no longer do so as members and cannot take the Lord’s Supper since their lack of repentance has caused the church to doubt the genuineness of their faith. In this way, church discipline is an act of grace in which a church puts someone out so they can understand just how gravely they have sinned. Yet it is impossible to put someone out if they aren’t first in. In other words, for someone to be excommunicated they must have first been “incommunicated.” The whole process of church discipline only makes sense when it involves formally joining a church body and then being formally removed from it.

While I freely admit that the words “church membership” are not found in the pages of the Bible, I am increasingly certain that the concept is. It is there because it is an essential mark of a healthy church and a core practice of a healthy Christian.

What would it mean to write hymns that speak specifically to the concerns, challenges, and temptations of your church? Not the global church or the church in general, mind you, but your own local church? What themes would be most important to those people? What truths might they have trouble believing and what doctrines might they have trouble applying to their lives? What temptations do they face that may not be addressed even in the wealth of Christian hymns that have stood the test of time and speak their precious truths?

These were the kinds of question that came to my mind as I listened to Hymns in Hard Places, the new collection of hymns by 20schemes Music. These were the kinds of question that came to my mind as I stood and worshipped with two local churches in Edinburgh, Scotland, and sang these songs under the leadership of the people they were written by and in fellowship with the people they were written for—churches situated in Scotland’s schemes (i.e. working-class housing estates or projects).
The album begins with a faithful rendition of Psalm 77, then turns to “Come Weary Souls,” a song that encourages those who have sinned to trust in the promise of God’s forgiveness: “There is no more guilt, / There is no more shame / Come like a child, believe and abide / Find rest in the Saviours name.” The next song, “Flee from Sin / Run to Jesus” brings comfort to those who find themselves struggling with old patterns of sin and addiction. “There’s a refuge from every lustful thought / From old habits enticing me away / When I fear my addictions won’t be overcome / There is hope through Christ’s resurrection day.”
The album continues with “We Long for that Day.” In a church context in which many members have experienced abuse and other forms of injustice, this song brings hope grounded in Christ’s return and the coming of final judgment. “God will judge this world so full of evil / and bring each work of darkness into light / on that day His enemies will tremble / When the King returns in glorious might / Finally oppression will be over / Secret acts of cruelty made known / Nowhere left to hide from the abuser / Every deed laid bare before the throne.” “Take Heart” returns to the theme of enduring suffering and sorrowing, “Praise His Name” promises eternal spiritual riches for those living in temporal poverty, while “Trust and Obey” rewrites the famous hymn for those who so often fail to trust and who so continuously struggle to obey: “Come you failures and see / Hopeless rebels set free / Where the Lamb, full submission, displayed / There He paid for our sin / Now His Spirit within / Is our joy as we trust and obey.”
And so it goes through several more hymns. It finishes with a bonus track which, though not meant to be sung congregationally, helpfully grapples with the reality that once we come to Christ, life often gets more difficult. “Why did life get harder, the minute I believed? / Why do I need armour, when You’ve won the victory? / Why does condemnation still weigh heavy on my heart? / I know that I’m forgiven so why is this path I’m on so dark?”
As twenty-first century English-speaking Christians, we are extremely well-resourced when it comes to hymns and have, quite literally, tens of thousands we can draw upon on any given Sunday. Yet it occurs to me that the great majority are written with the global church in mind rather than a very particular local church. They are written to be sung by millions rather than tens or hundreds and often speak to broad truths rather than specific ones. Speaking personally, I find something moving about the very notion of songs written for and sung by people who admit their particular struggles and who need particular encouragement.
It could be that your church finds something to sing in this collection of hymns, or it could be that it inspires your church to write songs that give a voice to their own concerns and difficulties. Either way, I expect you’ll benefit from Hymns in Hard Places. You can give it a listen on whatever music service you prefer.

There is a way of telling history that focuses on the impact of the few great figures that rise up in any generation. This “great man theory” says that history can best be understood when we focus on the dominant figures of the time. History, it says, turns on the actions, decisions, obsessions, and natural abilities of the few and the extraordinary—the Luthers, the Napoleons, the Lincolns, the Churchills. Understand them, and you understand the world as it was and the world as it has become.
I think Christians sometimes understand the church through a similar grid. We assume that the few figures who rise in prominence at any time are the key to understanding the church as a whole—that they in some way represent the Christian faith at that time. Hence if we tell the story of the church in the early twenty-first century, we may tell it through the lives and ministries of Sproul, Packer, MacArthur, Stott, and Piper. We assume that if we understand them, we have gained a representative understanding of Christians and ministries during their time. Understand them, we think, and you’re understanding all of us.
The great man theory has generally fallen out of favor among historians for a good number of reasons, among them that it’s too simplistic and that it’s difficult (or even impossible) to prove. That’s not to deny, of course, that some people have an outsized impact on any generation. It’s simply to deny that history revolves around the few rather than the many. And it’s to deny that the church depends on the few rather than the many.
We are thankful for preachers of extraordinary ability—the kind who step up to the podiums at the major Christian conferences or whose voice goes out over the airwaves. We are grateful for their ministries and grateful for all the ways we have benefited from their words. But at the same time, we know that the cause of the gospel would grind to a halt if it were not for 10,000 preachers of average ability—the kind who step up to pulpits in living rooms, school gymnasiums, and little churches far out into the countryside. Take away any one of those great men and the church would carry on unhindered; take away those ten thousand unknown men and the result would be catastrophic.
Similarly, we are thankful for those Christians of extraordinary wealth whose grand acts of generosity can make such a difference to churches and ministries. We enjoy reading about those individuals, families, or trusts who have made it their goal to give away vast amounts of wealth to the best of all causes. But if those families were to disappear or spend their last dollar, the church would survive just fine. However, if we were to take away the faithful giving of the ten thousands upon ten thousands who bring little more than their two copper coins, the ministry of the local church would be harshly hindered.
The most crucial work of ministry has little to do with “out there” in the wider Christian world and everything to do with “in here” in the local church.Share
We are thankful for the experts in marriage and parenting and a host of other important issues, experts who teach courses and lead seminars before great crowds. But most of us have had our marriages and parenting transformed far more by the examples before us each week in the local church. If the experts were to close down their seminars and shut down their conferences, the church would grieve for a moment, and then press on. But if the ordinary believers in your church and mine were to stop mentoring the people they see each and every Sunday, the church would be devastated. The most crucial work of ministry has little to do with “out there” in the wider Christian world and everything to do with “in here” in the local church. It has little to do with the few and the famous and far more to do with the many and the unknown.
It is good to thank God for those few men and few women who have been granted high podiums and wide ministries, and who have made their mark on so many of us. We truly thank the Lord for them. But they are not the story of what God is accomplishing in this world. The true story happens when the church gathers as God’s local community here and there, near and far, week by week. It’s in these little communities that God carries out the best of his purposes and in them that we see the strength of his hand.