Certain questions are crucial to the Christian faith: How does someone become a Christian? What do Christians believe? How should Christians behave? The Bible provides clear answers to each. But there’s another question, often overlooked, that’s equally crucial and to which the Bible gives sure guidance. It’s this: Where does a Christian belong? The question raises the issue of church membership.
Many well-meaning Christians attend a church without ever joining that church in membership. For many, this pattern probably finds its genesis in the expressive individualism rampant in our culture. But the notion that a local church is merely a gathering to attend rather than a body to join is foreign to the New Testament. It indicates a biblically inadequate view of the church.
An Important Distinction
When we read our Bibles, we distinguish between the invisible church and the visible church. Those who exercise faith in Christ are admitted into the invisible church—the vast company of individuals throughout time and across space that exists in perfect, spiritual unity. The old hymn describes this group as the “elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth.”1
Those who are born again by faith in Christ are born into a family, the household of faith. We’re living stones and a holy nation together with all God’s people (1 Peter 2:5, 9). If we are in Christ, then we are members of His invisible body.
But it doesn’t stop there. Biblically speaking, the invisible church finds expression in the visible communities of God’s people—those who identify themselves with a local congregation. Consider the New Testament letters. The majority of them are written to local congregations, to specific churches in particular cities. Or think about the various metaphors employed to refer to the church in Scripture: a flock, a body, a household, etc. These only work when we think in terms of a vital and close relationship with other Christians.
Although we come to Christ individually, we don’t live in Christ solitarily. We’re meant to be members of Christ and of one another.
The Local Church: God’s Special Provision
We lament when we hear of the countless orphans in our world. Tragically, many precious children grow up unattached, unloved, uncared for, and fending for themselves. In a similar way, those born again in Christ ought not to be spiritual orphans, growing up detached from a church family.
Although we come to Christ individually, we don’t live in Christ solitarily.
God’s purpose is that we would be born into physical families and then born again into spiritual families. The local church is a special provision for God’s children, supplying those things necessary for pressing on in the Christian life.
A Provision for Fellowship
Membership in a local church provides fellowship. The word for such fellowship in Greek is koinonia, a term once used to describe a business relationship. If two parties agreed to share in the risk and in the profits of a business venture, they would be in fellowship in the classical sense. It could also describe marriage, where a husband and wife would share everything with each other, becoming one.
The church in Acts came along and asked, “What’s the best possible word we could use to explain what’s going on in our local communities?” And they said, “How about koinonia, ‘fellowship’?” (See Acts 2:42.) In choosing this word, they determined to be a people of generous sharing rather than of selfish getting.
Indeed, Christian fellowship is concerned primarily with giving rather than with receiving. We ask not what our churches can do for us but instead what we can do for our churches.
A Provision for Instruction
In the church body, we deal not only with fellowship but also with instruction. Jesus sent His disciples out, charging them to “teach” what He had taught them (Matt. 28:18–19). He then gave gifts to the church toward that end, one of those gifts being “pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11 NIV). These are men set apart to labor in the Word and in doctrine for the sake of their churches. Together with their fellow elders, they watch over the flock as men who will give an account (Rom. 14:12).
Christian fellowship is concerned primarily with giving rather than with receiving.
Pastor-teachers are there for the “building up” of the church (Eph. 4:12). Through their careful instruction and encouragement, they equip all the saints for ministry. God has purposed that Christian instruction come mainly through the local church.
A Provision for Discipline
Discipline is a key ingredient in any household. Where there’s no discipline, chaos ensues. Few things are more embarrassing than spending time in an undisciplined family—no table manners, no respect for Mom and Dad, no patience, kindness, goodness, etc. We wonder, “Why doesn’t Dad do something here? Why doesn’t someone exercise restraint or care to intervene?” And so it is with the church.
When Jesus, outlining the process of discipline in the church, says that if the person under discipline “refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:17), He’s urging us to treat the unrepentant person as we would a person who doesn’t profess faith. The point is to sound an alarm, so to speak, hoping that God’s kindness would restore that person back to right relationship with Christ and with the church.
It’s a priceless gift to have Christian brothers and sisters in our lives—fellow members of one another—who aren’t afraid to call us back to Christ when we stray. Discipline in the church is formative. It’s meant for our good and for the body’s health.
A Provision for Service
Membership in a church also means joyful service. The local church is where God intends for us to discover our spiritual gifts, discerning with the church family’s help where our time and talent are best used for the body.
Perhaps the best picture of this is in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul likens the church to a body with various members, each member playing a critical role in the well-being of the whole (vv. 12–31). Not everybody agrees about everything when it comes to spiritual gifts, but we can agree on the main and plain things: spiritual gifts are varied, are given for the common good of the church family, and are to be evaluated to the degree that they’re used to edify the church.
The local church is where God intends for us to discover our spiritual gifts.
A Provision for Praise
Finally, the local church is God’s provision for praise. When we gather on the Lord’s Day, we do so for the purpose of worship, stirring one another up to good works (Heb. 10:24–25). The Bible speaks of worship in terms of the totality of our lives. Our work, reading, recreation, and corporate praise are all to bring glory to God (Rom. 12:1).
There’s a sense in which Sunday by Sunday, as God gives these gifts to the church, He’s preparing us for the great convocation of praise in eternity future. Our gatherings are a microcosm of what one day will be: the whole company of the redeemed declaring in praise, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:10).
Take Action!
If we’re meant to join rather than merely attend a local church, and if joining yields the blessings described above, then the application is clear: We ought to take action and join a church in membership. But what are we to look for in a local church? Here’s a good place to begin.
First, find a church that teaches the Bible not in a way that’s gibberish, legalistic, or confusing but in a clear and faithful manner—one in which those who are teaching the Bible are also themselves submitting to the Bible.
Second, look for where there is prayer taking place and, further, where there is true worship occurring—the worship of work well done, of consecration of the people’s lives to Christ and to one another.
Finally, find a church that is concerned with seeing unbelieving people become committed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Simply put: God’s desire is to see His children attached to Christ by faith and then to faithful local churches in membership.
This article was adapted from the sermons “Belonging — Part One” and “Part Two” by Alistair Begg.
S. J. Stone, “The Church’s One Foundation” (1866). ↩︎
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