why is it important to require people to “join” a church and become a “member”? Isn’t “membership” an outdated term/concept?
Joe Thorn has posted some thoughts as well as an outline for his membership class. Excellent stuff.
We do church “membership” because we believe it is a healthy way for us to practice what the Bible teaches should be true of a local church. Specifically, formal membership enables us to function as a covenant community characterized by a unified faith, work and discipline. Apart from membership we find that these things are more difficult to maintain.
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We use the term membership for two reasons.1. The term is biblical (Rom 12; 1 Cor 12; Eph 2:19, 3:6, 4:25, 5:30).
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2. The concept is biblical.
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go read the rest for explanation under each of the points above.
Keith, I seem to be missing the link on this reference. Do you still have it?
I’ve been thinking about this topic again lately.
sorry about that. I added the link. I wonder what else I did on February 4th.