getting membership right

In my last blog post I established the biblical basis for covenant. I did this as a way of reminding us that the only way a church truly sets itself apart and establishes itself as a body is in those things they covenant and purpose to do together. The covenant always establishes relationship. In scripture, the relationship between God and His people was established around the covenant.

In ancient times, the covenant agreement between the Suzerain King and the subservient vassal was called a "Suzerain Treaty". Suffice it to say that the treaty was always favorable to the King. It was typical in the establishement of this covenant that the vassal was required to walk through the broken pieces of animal parts spread out in two sections. The vassal was saying in affect, "May I be like this animal if I don't keep this covenant!" Two points here:

1. The King, for obvious reasons, was not required to walk through the pieces.

2. It was not just symbolism. In these violent primitive times, a vassal was quite literally torn to pieces when he violated the treaty. It was a very effective way of doing business. (I have tried for years to convince brides to utilize this method of covenant agreement during a wedding ceremony- no takers yet).

With this context as a backdrop, go back and read Genesis 15 and notice that God Himself passes through the pieces and does not require Abraham to pass through, as if to say, "I will be torn to pieces if my people do not fulfill the covenant."

Our relationship with God is established by this covenant, fulfilled by Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who was torn to pieces and became the covenant curse so that we could become the covenant blessing.

Do you see that we could not know relationship with God if it were not for the covenant?

In the same way, every relationship you have is established by some covenant. You came into that relationship because you fulfilled the "obligations" of an unspoken and yet very real covenant. By this I mean that every single relationship is defined by the acceptance and acquiescence of the people in that relationship to certain qualities that are unique and unchangeable. Every married person knows exactly what I am talking about here. There are things about my wife I will not change. There are many things about me my wife cannot change. We have to accept a certain degree of "unchangeableness" in order to stay in relationship and truly love each other. That is our unspoken covenant.

I have found through the years that the better the understanding of the unspoken covenant in a relationship, the better the relationship. I remember watching a video when I was in college which illustrated the importance of non-verbal communication in marriages. Women were asked to observe a video of their husbands as they were being interviewed in a separate room. The women were asked if they could tell what the husbands were thinking by mere observation. The study concluded that the married couples who defined themselves as "happily married" were much more capable of reading each other's body language than those who described themselves as "unhappily married".

The difference between the two groups was that happily married people had a better grasp of the unspoken covenant, while the others did not.

So the more clear the covenant, the better the relationship. In a church body, which is the visible earthly expression of the family of Christ, the need to understand clearly the terms of the relationship are extremely important. In other words, we need to know what it means to be "members of one another" (Ephesians 4:25).

I am convinced the reason we as Southern Baptists are now dealing with the problem of unregenerate membership is that we are reaping the result of a century of emotionalism and attractional evangelism. Could it be that we have so greatly emphasized bigger numbers and have utilized a pragmatic and sometimes manipulative approach to "get people down the aisle" that in our enthusiasm for numerical growth, we have forgotten our mandate for "making disciples". Could it be we have forgotten the end game is growing disciples and the only effective way of establishing a discipling relationship is by understanding and implementing the terms of our covenant agreement? And it could be that the reason so many SBC churches today have no idea who their members are or where they are is that our pragmatism has skewed our understanding of biblical covenant membership?

When we use an emotional manipulative approach to evangelism and then hand a person a card and tell them they are a member, are we not just anesthetizing them to the gospel and the true meaning of membership? A recent study by David Kinnaman of the Barna Research group confirms that somewhere around 70% of people who are registered as "accepting Christ" in revivals or crusades never actually end up committing to the life of the church. He goes on to make this observation:

As Christians, we have to keep in mind that response rates are not the ultimate goal but rather the wise and careful stewardship of the image of God......If you create more barriers with outsiders because of your tactics, you have not been a good steward of the gospel. How we choose to share Christ is as important as our actually doing it.

Consider from a biblical perspective how ridiculous the idea of having members that are not actually committed to the church:

1. Early disciples met together for the purpose of learning from the apostles teaching. (Acts 2:42-47)

2. The early church kept some kind of record of members as "the Lord added to their number" (Acts 2:42-47)

3. The word for "Church" is "Ekklesia", which means "called out ones".

4. The Bible teaches church discipline. One cannot be removed from that which he has not belonged. (1 Corinthians 5, Matthew 18:15-17)

5. Shepherds are required to take care of their flock. It would be impossible for a shepherd to take care of sheep he doesn't know about. (Acts 20:28)

6. Members are required to submit to spiritual leaders. (Hebrews 13:17, 1 Thess. 5:12-13, 1 Timothy 5:17) The only possible way to stay accountable to spiritual leaders is within the context of a body of believers who actually know each other.