What if we wrote our membership commitments from scratch?
I’ve been writing on membership for the last two months and I’m getting bored with the topic. It is time for an exit strategy. Here’s a good one: I’ll write up what I think we’d produce if we made a new list of membership standards for today if we started with blank paper with no Disciplines in hand. If we locked all the stakeholders in my denomination in a room (without their Disciplines) what might they come up with? Here’s my stab at it:
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Category one: Minimum
Membership Requirements (Minimum requirements to get in and stay
in) |
Category two: Expectations
and Admonitions (What we’ll teach & we expect from all
leaders) |
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Description: Our “Minimum
Membership Requirements are the entry-level requirements for membership. While the normal Christian life expects far
more than such a minimal list, these are the bare minimum requirements for
joining our church. If a candidate for
membership does not meet these requirements they will be nurtured toward
reaching the minimum requirements before being received into membership. If an existing member falls below the
minimum requirements they should expect to be confronted and expelled unless
immediate repentance and change of behavior occurs. |
Description: Our
“Expectations and admonitions” represent the “collective convictions” of our
church. This list is how our church
collectively speaks to ourselves urging our members toward becoming a fully
devoted follower of Jesus Christ. As
an attendee of our churches you can expect this lifestyle to be urged in
preaching and teaching in our church.
While we do not expel members who fall short of these standards we do
not treat them casually and we expect them as the norm for our leaders and
teachers. Our discipleship efforts
in the church are geared toward helping people have both right beliefs and
right behaviors. These expectations
and admonitions exemplify the sort of behavior we aim toward encouraging you
toward—thus in joining our church you should accept that these expectations represent
the kind of lifestyle your growth in grace should take you toward. |
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1. Grace—I have experienced God’s saving grace in conversion and have obeyed the command to receive water baptism and this grace has cleansed my life of such sins as murder, sexual impropriety, witchcraft, the occult, and heresy. |
1. We believe
committed Christian members of our church should totally abstain from
receiving, performing or aiding in the performance of abortions except
in the case of endangerment to the life of the mother—and only then after
prayerful counsel. |
2. Growth—I am growing spiritually personally and see evidence of God’s sanctifying work in gradually making me more like Christ. |
2. We believe committed Christian members of our church
should totally abstain from the production, personal profit from the sale of
or personal use of beverage alcohol or tobacco and we are
committed to help those addicted to such use to become totally released. |
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3. Group—I regularly attend worship, and receive the sacrament of communion and I also participate in some smaller group of believers where I am known relationally who provide encouragement, support and accountability. |
3. We believe
committed Christian members of our church should totally abstain from
gambling and other addictions that are poor stewardship and we even believe
that small stakes gambling in lotteries and even small stakes games could
be a gateway to larger and more serious gambling addictions and thus we
encourage our members to resist even these more moderate involvements in gambling.
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4. Gifts—I have discovered my spiritual gifts, abilities and talents and am involved in at least one active means of service in this church where I use my abilities to build others up in the body of Christ. |
4. We believe
committed Christian members of our church should resist any secret society
that requires an oath that takes precedence over the loyalty to Christ and
the Church. |
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5. Giving—I am a regular giver to this church and to other kingdom ministries including the needy remembering the principle of the “tithe” that is the historic standard for giving. |
5. We believe
committed Christian members of our church should uphold the sacred role of
traditional marriage for life and thus should never personally
initiate a divorce except in the case of adultery, homosexual behavior,
bestiality or incest, and even than only after prayerful counsel. |
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6. We believe committed Christian members of our church will
respect individual rights regardless of race, color or sex. |
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7. We believe
committed Christian members of our church should work in harmony with
others, seeking peace, walking in Christian fellowship with all other
Christians treating them with gentleness and affection while avoiding
division, strife and malice toward any. |
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8. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
practice compassion by helping others in distress, giving to the
needy, providing food for the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned and
generously giving to support missionaries and aid programs for the needy in
our world. |
That’s what I
think they’d come up with. If we locked all the “big guys” in a room
they’d come up with something not too far off from what I’ve outlined above I
bet. Especially if
there were a lot of pastors in the group. However, starting from blank paper is a
dangerous thing to do. When you do all
you get is a “snapshot” of whatever is the current position on everything. The church simply puts into law whatever
“everyone in their right mind believes.”
That’s how we got
the list we now have. Don’t think for a minute that when the church
wrote down rules about alcohol or tobacco or gambling or even buying things on
Sunday--that anyone had to change. Not
at all! When the church “took a
snapshot” in those days,
EVERY Christian felt this way—100%. Since nobody in the whole church drank
alcohol, or gambled, or bought on Sunday they simply wrote it down—it cost
nobody anything—they merely took a snapshot of how everyone already lived. Hey, before 1950 hardly anybody bought on
Sunday—even non-Christians!. Most of our (serious) church rules came from
serious social movements in the country.
When the powerful prohibition movement swept the country Christians had
to take sides—now which side do you think they’d take? Of course they joined the not-a-drop side and
it became practice and church law. Same for the “Blue Laws” movement, and the anti-Masonic movement. Not that these movements had no church
folk—they did, but when they got extreme they forced church organizations to
make strong statements. These were not
primarily church sponsored movements though.
They were gigantic social movements that the church got caught up
in. And like all social movements they
tended toward the extreme. “Temperance”
which in its very name might have indicated “moderation” came to me being a
tee-totaler.
There was no room for discussion—you were either for booze or against
it. We didn’t like the boozers so where
could we go? We joined the total
abstinence crowd and wrote it into our documents. As for tobacco my denomination ignored it for
years until the anti-tobacco forces forced us to declare ourselves. (There may
still be some North Carolina tobacco farmers in my church who were grandfathered in and allowed to keep growing their
weed.) The point—taking snapshots using
blank paper is why we have rules today that seem out of date.
And,
what about today’s social movements. The church is caught up in
great social movements today too. The fact that few people even blinked when I
wrote a statement above calling for total abstinence from performing or having
an abortion show how we’ve all come to accept this today even though it is more strict than our present Discipline. The anti-abortion movement has radicalized
and insists even that a 1 hour old fertilized egg is truly human life—and we
have gone along—after all, we don’t want to be put over there with Ted Kennedy
and the liberals. As for homosexuality
I have no doubt that we could get a statement on paper today pounding them into
the ground just like they did “divorcees” in 1950. When we say “Well, everybody
knows this is wrong” we forget is this is precisely how sure our grandfathers
felt when they wrote down rules about alcohol, Sunday sales and even things
like television and jewelry at one point in our history. We think their rules are silly and our rules
are “obvious.” But, of course their
rules were just as obvious to them in those days.
If we’re going to
change the church standards we’d better be humble about it. What we write down today our grandchildren
will some day consider us chuckleheads for demanding. We will be the legalists. I
know you refuse to believe it. You say,
“But it can’t go any further—we now have clear Bible support.” But you forget that there is clearer Bible
support against wearing jewelry than against abortion. Is abortion wrong. You bet!
But claiming “it is obviously condemned in the Bible” won’t cut is 50
years from now when your grandchildren want to re-mint the rules for their
generation. Whatever we ban may be
“obvious to every Christian we know” but it will not be so obvious to our
grandchildren. They will get out our
list and reject it with shock at our legalism, wondering how we could be so
bound up in our times and ignore so many more important things. They will “loosen up” on rules that will make
us roll over in our graves—things that our corpses would say “But you can’t
even be a Christian and do that!” And
they’ll add new things to their list that will turn us into sinners—like we’ve
added racism today and turned many of our own grandfathers into sinners. If we re-mint the book—we need to do it
humbly and not announce “we finally got it.”
Denominations that “finally get it” don’t get it! Our new snapshot will fade faster than the
one we’re trying to replace—sow e ought to be humble about it all.
So, am I saying
we shouldn’t re-mint our Articles of Religion and Membership
Commitments?
Not at all!
We ought to revisit
them.
Just not from
scratch.
Keith Drury February 7, 2005