Top Five Church "Membership" Myths

1. The early church did not have church membership.
If I have to pick true or false, I pick false for this one. There were definite expectations of the small churches (40-50 would have been very large indeed for a house church) of the early church. They differed from assembly to assembly. Jerusalem assemblies were drastically different from the assembly at Corinth, for example. You could get kicked out, as 1 Corinthians 5 indicates, along with other passages.

2. Everyone who comes to my church should be a member.
If I have pegged myth #1 correct, then #2 is a myth too. The New Testament and later Christianity distinguish between those who have become part of the people of God and those who do not. This does not preclude a "seeker sensitive" add on for our times. After all, 1 Corinthians 14 speaks of unbelievers coming into the assembly.

But unbelievers are not a part of the body of Christ. They are not members of the church.

3. Membership should be restricted to what the Bible requires and forbids.
I'm going to say that this is partially true in one sense and yet false in other senses.

a. It is first false because the Bible was not written to address the 21st century church. Read it. It says it was written to people who lived 2000 to 3000 years ago. Their world was quite different from our world. Doing what they did then doesn't do the same thing now.

b. So we have issues that the Bible says nothing about. The Bible says squat about abortion--don't kid yourself with the obscure verses people use that had nothing to do with abortion originally. They had words for such things in the ancient world. They're not in the Bible.

But that does not automatically mean that abortion is okay. It's about time we grew up in our hermeneutic and became a little more mature than the blind application and voodoo interpretive methods most people use.

c. The third claim I want to make here is the most important under this point. It is a good thing for there to be pockets of Christendom with unique identities within the body of Christ. Reducing the universal church to one bland set of ideology and practice is tantamount to telling the whole body of Christ just to be an eye or an ear.

For one thing, we will never agree on a singular biblical theology. This is a pipe dream. This side of the kingdom of God, Christians will always have distinct perspectives on what God requires and what is true when it comes down to specifics. It was this way even in the early church, although Acts softens the disagreements in its presentation.

It enriches the church for us to hold the core Christian faith and certain core practices in common while being diverse in our more particular understandings and practices. It enriches the church for the Brethren in Christ to practice foot washing and for the Wesleyan Church to be teetotalers. It enriches the church for Reformed folk to emphasize the sovereignty of God, the Wesleyans to emphasize victory over sin, and the Roman Catholics to emphasize good works.

Our particularity is legitimate in at least two respects: 1) we have no real choice but to see certain things as we see them and 2) certain traditions of particular groups constitute identity and are worthwhile to affirm as who we are in the body of Christ.

d. In what respect, then, is this statement true? I would say that it would be magnificent if we had a way to affirm "membership" of our local congregations even when these individuals do not believe the way we do or practice Christianity the way we do.

In my perfect world, Wesleyans would identify core Christian beliefs and practices that we required of community members. We would say, we recognize you fully as a Christian like us, not one bit less than we are. You affirm the Apostle's Creed. You follow those of the Ten commandments continued by the New Testament as manifestations of love of God and neighbor. You are not Wesleyan, but you are fully Christian.

4. The particulars of the Wesleyan Church (insert your denomination) are what the Bible requires.
Give it up. This is naivete to the height. It is appropriate for us to have a unique identity, but let's not pretend for one minute that we are the little group that just happens to have all the right interpretations, beliefs, and practices. We think we have it right on a vast many issues where we think other groups have it wrong. But we are bound to have some blind spots somewhere.

And for now we are some of the Nazirites of the body of Christ--we don't drink. Let's not pretend that this question is as simple as "what the Bible says." The Bible bids us not to be drunkards and that's about it. It is perfectly legitimate for us not to do a whole host of things--or to do a host of things--that the Bible does not require us to do or not do.

So it is perfectly legitimate for us to have covenant membership, especially when we move beyond the local congregation to the leadership of the church both local and global. In fact, if we do not have such distinctions on these levels, we will melt away into non-existence or, like non-denominational churches, go with the mindless flow of our local attendees, all under the false pretense of just reading the Bible and doing what it says. Yeah right.

5. It is wrong for there to be denominations.
In many respects I have already addressed this myth throughout above. There were distinct idea and practice groups in the early church. The Jerusalem church had a different theology and practice than Paul's churches. Apollos probably gave different advice on certain issues than Paul did. John of Revelation would not have taken Paul's tact on meat offered to idols.

The late middle ages are a testimony to what happens when everyone must believe the same. The 20000 denominations are a testimony to the absurdity of thinking we just get our beliefs from the Bible alone.

I'm calling for a more sophisticated ecclesiology, one that I think could mesh with the Wesleyan Church's division between community and covenant members. I think we've kind of stumbled on it. But I think we could actually "write the book" on 21st century ecclesiology here!