MEMBERSHIP

You won’t find a verse in Scrip­ture that says, “Thou shalt join a local church.” But we believe that’s not because the authors of Scrip­ture didn’t think church mem­ber­ship was impor­tant. Rather, we believe it’s because church mem­ber­ship was sim­ply assumed. Just con­sider these truths:

• Paul taught that Jesus gave Him­self for the church. Jesus did this to redeem us from law­less­ness and to purify for Him­self a peo­ple for His own pos­ses­sion who are zeal­ous for good works (Titus 2:11–14).
• We are com­manded to exhort one another daily and to meet together reg­u­larly so that we do not become hard­ened by the deceit­ful­ness of sin (Hebrews 3:12–14, 10:19–25).
• We are com­manded to use our spir­i­tual gifts to build up the church; the gifts are not merely — or even mostly — for pri­vate edi­fi­ca­tion (1 Corinthi­ans 12:4–11; Eph­esians 4:11–16).
• We are com­manded to love one another not in word or talk, but in deed and in truth (1 John).
• We are com­manded to obey our lead­ers and sub­mit to them because they are the ones God has appointed to keep watch over us for our spir­i­tual good and because they will answer to God for their lead­er­ship (Hebrews 13:17).

To live out these com­mands in a mean­ing­ful way, we believe that we must com­mit our­selves to other like-minded Chris­tians through mem­ber­ship in a local church.