I recently heard someone explain that they were a part of the church and therefore didn’t need to be a part of a church. After all, if I am one of the bricks in the temple, do I really need to go to a particular building to worship God? And what about membership; do I need to go through some process of officially joining a church? Increasingly, the answer to these questions among professing believers seems to be no. Many Christians have a network of affiliations with various ministries and churches, but they themselves aren’t attached to a particular body of believers. Does God want you to be a member of one local church?
Although there isn’t a verse in Scripture that says, “And the people of Ephesus took the five-week new members’ class and were received as official members!” What we find in the New Testament clearly demonstrates that individual Christians were a part of local congregations where they had some type of official status or membership. Through baptism, they were identifying not only with Jesus but with Jesus’ family, the church. The newly baptized entered into a binding relationship with God and his people. This set the stage for being able to fulfill the various calls in the New Testament to the Christian community. Calls like:
“Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb.3:13) “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Heb. 13:17) “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” (Rom. 12:9-13) “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2)
For the New Testament believers, weekly Christian fellowship under the apostles’ teaching was a non-negotiable (Acts 2:42). It provided the foundation for fulfilling the various exhortations to serve one another within the church. It also allowed for accountability and submission to qualified and ordained leaders (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Tit. 1:5-16). To forsake this is to set aside what the apostles themselves delivered to the church as the normal structure God ordained for discipleship. Being connected to a church through membership, under the oversight of elders, is something every Christian should long for, and church on Sunday is integral to our Christian growth.
