Commitments, Covenants and Church Members

I've been thinking a lot lately about membership.

It's long been a running joke in churches that membership is a made-up number.
There are many churches, and many dedicated staff members, who put excellent and thorough work into calculating church membership. But things happen - people accumulate on the rolls but fade out over time. People are transient - they move, they change careers or sides of town or groups of friends, and people fade away. More often, "active membership" is a fluid term - is somebody active if they come to worship once every six weeks and a small group five weeks out of every six months? And what about all those people who clearly have a relationship with a church, but who never came forward during the altar call and answered The Big Question in front of God'n'everybody? What about all those people who fall between the cracks of "visitor", "member", and "active member"?

That's life.

So here's the question - what do we do about church membership? Because it's clearly built around a model that's no longer realistic, especially in cities. We can't expect people to establish a church home and stay there for their whole lives, and we certainly can't guilt people for living their real lives out there in the world instead of in church every day. Furthermore, research is clear that Millenials - the new adult generation formed of people like me born in the 1980s and 1990s - aren't joiners. They don't join - they do and they serve, if they believe in the cause, but they don't join. How passe!

Aren't we equipping people to live as Jesus-followers out there in the world?

Furthermore, all the traditional "benefits" of membership - exclusive communion, barrier to church leadership, social stigma - are failing. In our church, anybody can and does take part in leading worship. Any and all people are invited to take part in the Sacred Feast of Christ. We recognize the value of engaging with people where they are, even if they only show up to church every couple of months.

By the same token, we can't abolish membership. More to the point, we can't ignore commitment. We can't ignore the fact that people will inevitably respond to the Gospel, from time to time, with the fervent desire to dedicate their lives to what has for centuries been called The Way. That's a sacred covenant, with great responsibilities for both individual and body.

Becoming a Christian has nothing to do with baptism. It has nothing to do with church membership, youth group, or lifting your arms in worship. It has everything to do with a commitment to a love-oriented way of life. That's a very hard thing to dedicate yourself to - and when somebody decides to take that identity onto themselves, we should celebrate their bravery and strength with all due pomp and circumstance. Baptism and other commitment rituals are crucial. We need to recognize commitment... without pretending that "church members" are a separate and better class of people.

However membership ends up "looking" at FCC SouthSide, I know this -- our easy labels telling us "who's in the club" are gone. All we have are people - people dedicated, people wavering, people unsure, people trying, people succeeding and failing, people helping one another on the journey to God's wholeness and peace. If we can recognize the power of each moment on that journey, celebrate the difficult decision to walk, and walk with people as they take each trepidatious step, we will all reach the Kingdom together.

Share your thoughts on this complicated and deeply-rooted subject below, on Twitter with @revgeiger, or on Facebook with PastorGeiger. Thanks, and may your day bring you all the blessings you seek and more.