Can’t You Just Let Me Attend?

We live in a chronically noncommittal society. No wonder, then, that this has been dubbed the age of anxiety. Surely, covenant relationships aren’t the only cure, but it might surprise us how much stability of soul comes from deep, reliable, unflighty fellowship.

Today, most of the mainstream societal influences in your life implicitly or explicitly cater to your personal sense of freedom. Change your mind, opt out, you do you. No need to cut ties if you don’t have them.

Many of the freedoms we enjoy in late modern life are truly precious gifts — some even generally conducive to true Christianity. But others subtly promote a false vision of self and all reality; they pretend (and we’re often happy to pretend along with them) that our autonomous selves are the end-all-be-all. I am the given; others should cater to me. My immediate desires are fixed; the world around me should adjust accordingly.

Covenant-Making God

Into this pit of quicksand enters the covenant-making God. That you are a creature, who did not make yourself, but was made (and is upheld) by the Creator, is bracing enough. Add to that, he’s not just God but a God who makes covenants.

God made a covenant with the first man in the garden before sin entered the world and dwelled in the human soul. God made a covenant with a moon-worshiper named Abraham and promised to make a nation out of him. God made a covenant with that nation of chosen people once he had delivered them safely from slavery. And this covenant was not simply with him vertically but included thick horizontal commitments to fellow humans for life together under God.

“It might surprise us how much stability of soul comes from deep, reliable, unflighty fellowship.”

Today, we orient in and under Christ through the new covenant. From it follow horizontal commitments to each other, promises worked out, inevitably, among real people in our own locale, that is, in local churches.

The wisdom and power of local church “membership” (or whatever you call it) rests not on a single proof text or two. Rather, the nature of human relationships in the world God made, the arc of redemptive history toward a new-covenant people not of ethnic birth but delivered from sin and death by new birth, the good limits of creaturely finitude particularized in various places around the world — all these lead inexorably to “membership,” specific people committed to one another in a specific place. No matter what you call it, what’s vital is the concept of real belonging and mutual allegiance.

My Sheep?

In a recent essay, Massachusetts pastor Stephen Witmer defines “church membership” as

a clear and continuing mutual commitment between an individual Christian and a local church, in which the church endorses the member’s profession and shepherds the member’s soul, and the member submits to the church’s authority and shares in the church’s life.

The implicit commitment between churches and their duly appointed leaders in the New Testament provides a compelling line of evidence for “membership.”

Hebrews refers to Christians having their own local leaders, who keep watch over their souls (Hebrews 13:17). The benefits here are mutual and manifold. Humble Christians want leaders who know them in their local setting and watch over their souls. And good leaders, to do their work, need to know whom they will give account for — who’s in and who’s out.

The apostle Paul addresses the local leaders in Ephesus, saying, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). To give the flock their careful attention and watch out for their souls, shepherds need to know who’s in the flock and who’s not.

In the same way, the apostle Peter tells leaders in Rome to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight . . . not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2–3). Again, shepherds need to know which sheep are “in their charge” and belong to their flock, not another.

Moreover, the New Testament abounds with commands we cannot fulfill without some real sense of belonging to a particular local church and its pastors. Can you appropriately esteem your leaders (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13), honor them (1 Timothy 5:17), and have a healthy disposition that yields to their leading (Hebrews 13:17) without identifying yourself with them and submitting to the structure of belonging that allows them to know and care well for those in their charge?

For Your Good and Joy

Witmer’s definition above appeals to two leading benefits for every Christian: “the church endorses the member’s profession and shepherds the member’s soul.” It is naive, at best, to think these two benefits are anything less than dear beyond words. Amid the unruly waves of sin and sickness, disease and death, spiritual growth and puzzling backslides, the tangible, embodied endorsement of your profession of faith in Jesus by Bible-believing, trustworthy pastors, along with the whole congregation, can be an anchor for the soul. Commitment can be a means of precious assurance.

“In church membership, we covenant to be the church to each other on the best days and worst ones.”

If you keep attending a church without covenanting, what do you lose? For one, you forfeit the deep and enduring joys of being the church to others and having others be the church to you. In church membership, we pledge to “be the church” to each other. This has always been vital, but it is becoming especially so in our mobile and transitory society.

Without a local-church covenant, you lose the assurance that someone will have your back when life gets tough, when you’re weary, hurting, doubting. In church membership, we do not covenant “till death do us part,” like marriage, but we do pledge to be there for each other in thick and thin.

It’s easy to be the church when life is easy — but much harder when life gets hard. And so we make promises to each other, covenant commitments, to be the church to each other not just when it’s convenient and comfortable, but when we face friction and challenges — for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish one local bride of Christ. And so we imitate Christ not in theory but in real local church practice.

Safety in the Ship

From the early days, Christians have often seen the church as a boat, afloat on the waves of the present age, an ark to save us from drowning in the swirling seas and storms that come at us. In this world, winds suddenly shift. Unexpected tempests arise with stunning fierceness. The boat rocks and creaks. We might not see the sun for days on end.

In such times, we have our unseen Lord above and our visible, tangible fellow sailors alongside. Christ has appointed our fellows as his hands for holding us fast, his mouth for telling us truth, his feet for springing to our aid as the ship tilts. In church membership, we covenant to be the church to each other on the best days and worst ones. Ironically, the kind of commitment an anxious generation scoffs at provides precisely the safety it so desperately longs for.