Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus (Building Healthy Churches)

The 9 Marks Series brings us a great little book by Jonathan Leeman dealing with the issue of Church Membership. In today's culture most people don't want to "commit" to much of anything. As a matter of fact church "membership" is on the decline in all denominations. It is not that necessarily because attendance is dropping, but membership is dropping. People are not as committed to denominational ties nor are they as committed to a local body of believers as they should be. Why is that?I think part of the issue is that they don't want to commit because then the local body of believers will hold them "accountable" for their walk with Christ. The second issue is, if I become a member then they are going to ask me to get more involved on a church board, while maybe true, that is not the only reason to become a church member.The picture of membership is a bigger picture than most Christians today realize. It is affirming your belief in the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior and committing yourself to a local body of believers for growth, nurture, accountability and discipleship. There are many Biblical reasons for membership and Leeman does a good job of bringing those together and pointing them out for those who are attending a local church.I believe that every Christian, either layman or professional clergy will benefit from reading through this short book. Don't let church membership be a stumbling block for attending consistently a local church, instead read through this work, pray about it and come to realize why it is for your benefit and the benefit of the larger Body of Christ for you to become a "church Member".Enjoy!

Why should you read this book? Because church membership is perhaps a bigger deal than you realize and if you’re like me, before reading this book, your approach to church membership was all wrong. Subsequently, what this succinct and practical book does is remind the Christian who Jesus is (the One with absolute power and dominion) and the organization that He authorized: the Church. The church therefore has the highest kingdom authority on earth. Hence, it is not a voluntary club that we join or is a place that we have a superficial connection to. By divine design, the church plays a central role in the believer’s life as it pertains to (for example) spirituality, where we live, social circles, vocation, ethics and finances. Moreover, this book is especially timely because it speaks directly to the modern American, individualistic flavor of Christianity where I merely do what I want to do and only think about the church when absolutely necessary. The question then becomes: what is a church, what is a church member, what does church membership look like, and how does a Christian submit to a local church and its leaders? The book will subsequently go on to unpack and answer all of these questions. What you will undoubtedly have at the end is renewed thinking and an open heart for Christ and His people.Overall, this is a gospel-centered book saturated in Scripture. Indeed, the Bible never explicitly mentions church “membership.” But, although it is an idea never expressed it is everywhere assumed.I received this book for free in that it was given to new-member candidates at my local church. I think you will benefit from reading this book for yourself and likely so will your fellow Christian brothers and sisters.

My initial reaction to the title/subtitle of this book was pretty negative and theologically snooty. "Isn't the world supposed to know who the church is because of our love? (Jn13:35)" Well, that's true, but not mutually exclusive to belonging to the Church, even formally.I want to give some testimony here to an effective tool our church has begun to use. We recently formalized membership at our church, a move that I am emphatically for as a pastor. This book pinpointed a lot of reasons to support this move which I was already seeing intuitively. Here are some of the items this movement is helping us grapple with as a congregation: - How do we enforce church discipline when the need arises? - Can we have any impact on the hypocrisy of people in our midst who profess Jesus with their mouth but their hearts are undeniably far from him? - How do we be clear about the expectations of what it means to be a part of our church, and thereby draw people into defined discipleship? - How is it that someone could disavow our most central values (like belief in Jesus as the Savior and son of God) but be a "member" of our church simply by attending it?There are a variety of Scriptures that point to the need for a church to have an answer to these issues and as this book points out, church membership, while in and of itself is not a biblical mandate, is a functional construct by which we are able to carry out many biblical mandates that need some kind of "cutting board" to hold our issues against and deal with them. Membership has traditionally been an abused tradition, and churches have absolutely committed the crime of bludgeoning people with "belonging" as a measure to stroke their own egos as church leaders. Just don't judge a philosophy by its abusers.And, don't judge the book by it's cover (if that's what is turning you off.) Perhaps not everyone needs to read this, but if your church has need to consider formalizing membership, this will be a helpful tool for you. And if you're frustrated that churches formalize membership, I think actually reading this might give some insight to the values we're trying to pursue by setting a clear path in front of our congregations as to what it looks like to follow Jesus here.

This book is a MUST read for any individual considering and studying Church Membership as depicted in the Bible. All Elders, Deacons and leaders MUST read this book! Truly life changing! If you are a Christian, I would STRONGLY exhort you to submit yourself to a local Church if your not already. By the grace of God, this book will give you greater conviction on what the Word of God says in regards to Church Membership! May we all honor Christ as born again Christians by choosing to submit to a local body of believers!

good read

Well written and easy to follow logic that is supported by Scripture. Hopefully it would support all churches to be united in some of the core ordinances Jesus has made know through the Bible.

Great book, we're doing our church's membership class with it.

So far all the books I've read in this series are excellent. Concise, readable, practical and deep.

Do not believe that the universal Church will become a reality only at the return of Christ, it is a reality now !The concept of us being Christ’s representative on earth is not exact! Does God need a representative?We are the light to the world,but of the gospelMakes a difference in my humble opinion