Members, Don't Count (For expanded context, see "White Wave Manifesto" in Pages on this blog.)
Why do we count members in church? It might be that our denominations require it for statistical/financial purposes. Maybe increasing membership is a feather in our cap. Maybe decreasing membership is a concern in our hearts, but what is the theological reason that we count members? Are we recognizing a certain group of people that have filled a certain battery of requirements? And if this is true, if we are counting people who belong to the church, than perhaps we have forgotten to Whom the people actually belong. Hint: He’s the one who filled the requirements!
In ancient days, God divided the Promised Land among the
tribes and the tribes divided their allotments among the founding families. Every
family had an ancestral acreage. The
ancestral acreage was not only a source of livelihood, it was a constant
reminder of the God who not only provided the rain, but provided the land
itself. It was held in trust. The family
was a steward of the land. Families didn’t own what they worked. It
ultimately belonged to God.
Sometimes, though, there was a crop failure. Sometimes there
was a sickness in the family. Sometimes
there was an unexpected mouth to feed and the ancestral land was mortgaged. Sometimes,
a family would have to sell the land to pay the taxes or to make ends
meet. They would then hire themselves
out as laborers for a different land owner, but only for a certain amount of
time. At the end of a period of fifty
years, the land was restored to the original family. We have heard of this restoration as part of
the jubilee year:
You
shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the
period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the
trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of
atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you
shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the
land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return,
every one of you, to your property and every one of you to our family. That
fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; you shall not sow, or reap the
aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be
holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces. In this year of
jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. When you make a
sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not cheat each
other. When you buy from your neighbor,
you shall pay only for the number or years since the jubilee; the seller shall
charge you only for the remaining crop years. (Leviticus 25:8-15)
The buyers of the land knew that at the end of fifty years, the
horn would blow and the land would be returned to the original owners. The sellers knew that their descendants would
eventually be restored to the land of promise.
The purchase price, therefore, was based on the time left from the point
of sale to the time when the land would be restored to its original owner. If there were twenty years left until Jubilee,
the land would command a higher value than if there were just ten. If there were forty years remaining, the
price would be higher still.
When the horn blew the prodigals would return home. The jubilee was a blank slate and a fresh
start. We see why the jubilee was
sometimes called the, “year of the Lord’s favor.” Everything was new again. The
people returned to their original property.
For Israel, that meant a return to the promise and a reminder of the One
who made that promise a reality. The trumpet
blast was a reminder that God always brings his people home: through the call
of Abraham and his barren wife Sara, through an extended trek across the ocean floor after hundreds of years of slavery, through the howling wilderness,
against great odds and sure defeat, God was faithful. God is faithful still.
The
goal of jubilee was not a commandment to make the people more religious. The goal was not to make the land more
productive. The goal was to set the
people free. Similarly, the goal of our Christ
was not to make good church members. The
goal was, and still is, to delight in “the divine love that swamps both body
and soul." (Barbara Brown Taylor, “Sabbath Resistance,” Christian Century (May 31, 2005): 35.) The goal remains for the church to experience communion with a God who delights
in us. As a response, we glorify Him by joining the church and offering our
praise. The church is not a substitution for a personal relationship and
personal ministry, but a launching pad for it.
What if, in the church, we thought of the church membership
in the same way the ancients thought of land ownership? After a period of time, the horn would blow
and not only would we let the land lay fallow we would release the servants by
deleting the membership roles. The people
would then be free to suspend their membership obligations. They would be free from serving the church
and be reminded that they serve the One who created the church.
This membership purge would be equally applied to both the
newly baptized and the original charters; to those members that are shut-in and
to those members that go out; to those members that are contributing
financially and to those that aren’t; to those members that are attending
worship every week and to those who attend faithfully every Easter and
Christmas. All are cut free.
But we hesitate at the thought of deleting membership rolls
knowing that we would be raising judicatory ire. We hesitate because there would be some in
our churches who would balk and squawk at the idea of deleting our roles. We know that church membership should be less
about recruitment and more about deployment but we also know that such action
would solicit a rare visit by denominational representatives suddenly concerned
about our orthodoxy while protesting the loss of funding based on active
membership.
Furthermore, we are secretly proud of
our membership. “Our numbers are holding
steady but our giving is up.” “We had
four people join last week.” “We have
over 6 thousand members.”
But
perhaps for all of our focus on membership, our focus is on the wrong
thing. Is our membership in the church
more important than our relationship to Christ? Deleting the membership roles
might remind us of the proper role the church plays in our relationship with
God. Becoming a non-member does not mean we must be a non-attender. In fact, there is nothing Biblical commanding
us to be members of a church. Indeed, I
know of one church in town that doesn’t keep membership roles. They never have. The truth is, we are accountable to God, not
the church.
Membership
has nothing to do with keeping our name on a membership list. It isn’t about paying
our dues. It isn't based on biannual
church attendance. So why do we have
such a hard time wrapping our minds around the idea of deleting the membership
roles? Could it be that we are more
concerned with church maintenance than spiritual maintenance? We need to
remember that preservation of the church is not the same thing as preservation
of the truth. So let us blow that horn
and delete those dusty and dated membership roles. It is time for a blank slate and a fresh
start.
It is time to announce that our church is deleting its
membership roles!
Concomitant
with the announcement that membership roles are being deleted, the congregation
will need to be reminded that membership in the church was never the goal. The church might make an announcement that
membership roles will not be kept any longer. In some cases, the church will be
required by the denomination to keep track of members. Perhaps a new membership class might be
offered for all former members to attend before they are added to the
membership roles.
The announcement that the roles are being deleted should be
well in advance of the actual act of membership roll deletion. The interval of time between the announcement
and its execution will vary from one community to the next. Along with the announcement, the benefits of such a decision
should be disclosed to the congregation.
For instance, with the universal purging of the roles, there would be no
more inactive church members on the books just because they went through
confirmation thirty years ago or because their parents were members. The
process of removal would be uniform for everybody and not based on an annual
review of attendance or financial contributions or ancestry. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
As a result of this announcement, the church would have the
real opportunity to address what church membership really means and who is
qualified. Are shut-in’s members? In
what way? Are college graduates that
have moved away members? What about
children or grandchildren that attend occasionally, but don’t give to the
ministry of the church? And what about those
that give to the church but don’t attend?
Is there something more to church membership then showing up and
shelling out?
Most church membership lists are comprised of both active
and inactive members. The rolls include
those that have faithfully attended worship for five decades, and those that
haven’t attended church for five years.
There are some previously active members that haven’t attended worship
since they had their feelings hurt. Some
active attendees have never participated in a ministry of the church. Some have served faithfully but have never
contributed financially.
Membership alteration is a prickly subject among
parishioners. Nobody likes to be pricked
and it seems that nobody likes to have the membership roles deleted. Even those members that haven’t been to
church in years, or perhaps on only a couple of Sundays every year, are
offended if the suggestion is made they be moved to the inactive list…let alone
deleted from the roles altogether.
Deleting all the members at the same time removes from the equation any
suggestion that favoritism is being employed.
The spiritually mature who do attend
and contribute to the church on a weekly basis will understand.
They will understand
that there are benefits to deleting the membership roles. They know that members would be freed from
being in bondage to the church and it would free the church from being in
bondage to its members. They can
appreciate that being set free from memberships is not akin to being severed
from faith but rather remembering the one who set us free.
When the membership
rolls are deleted the necessity in serving the church is removed. We would have
a chance to submit fully to the Lord and discern what God would have us do. Our focus can be re-centered on Christ.
Finally, announcing that the
membership rolls are going to be deleted would force the congregation to ask, “What
are we really counting?”
Joab
reported to the king the number of those who had been recorded; in Israel there
were eight hundred thousand soldiers able to draw the sword, and those of Judah
were five hundred thousand. But afterward, David was stricken to the heart
because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, “I have sinned
greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt
of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.” (2 Samuel 24:9-10)
Does numbering our
members help or hinder our focus on and our faith in Jesus? In counting our membership, are we acting
wisely or foolishly?
We have seen people join
the church. We have seen them stand
before God and everybody and promise to be faithful members of the church and
drop out of membership just a few months later.
We have had young people go through confirmation, make a proclamation of
faith, and then, just a few short years later, we never hear from them again.
It is not uncommon for the membership roster—those counted as active members—to be twice current attendance. Inactive
membership, well, forget about it.
Remember how you became a member of
the church? Prior to that event, you had an opportunity to study the word of God and in that
process, discovered for yourself who Jesus Christ was and what it meant to have
a relationship with Him. After that period
of study, you had an opportunity to profess your faith in Jesus Christ as your
personal Lord and Savior in front of the whole congregation. You had not been baptized and at that point
you were. I had been baptized as a baby,
but then I had the opportunity to profess my faith as well. We entered into a covenant and we embraced
the promise and promised to be involved in the work of His church.
One of the first disciples put church membership this
way:
Coming
to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by god and
precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a
holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ. (1 Peter 2:4-5)
In those days before Christ, only the priests were allowed
to get close to God. Priests were chosen by God to come into his presence
making sacrifices before God on behalf of the people. In the temple ministry, only the priests
could enter into Holy of Holies, into the very presence of God and minister on
behalf of the masses outside that sacred place.
In these days after his death and resurrection, we have that
same opportunity. Church membership is
not about being served, but serving God.
Not just priests…but an entire priesthood. Church membership is about an
official relationship with Christ, now available not just to the priests, but
to all. The membership is a gift we give
to the Lord. It is not a gift that we
give to ourselves. We don’t have any
special privileges because we are new members, old members, or charter members.
However, in our churches, membership does not always equal relationship. Instead of membership being a call to
service, it is often a call to be served.
“Membership has its benefits.”
Members have votes…and influence. Members have discounted rates for weddings,
free counseling, hospital visits, and funerals.
Fine. But church membership shouldn’t be the pinnacle of our
relationship with Christ but rather the result of it. Still we hesitate. We have been focused on
membership for so long that we can’t imagine life without it. We worry and we
stew about membership and we try to increase it, at least maintain it. And we
panic when it begins to dwindle. We
sometimes surmise that when it increases, God must be pleased with our
efforts.
Certainly
there is the risk that the church might lose some members to other churches if
the roles are deleted. But that is okay
for the kingdom is bigger than our local congregations. The sheep are free to follow God wherever God
leads. If we had the courage to delete
our membership roles, I believe that the non-churched might be drawn to see
this new thing that God is doing. We
don’t have to work harder at increasing our membership roles. Membership, after all, is God's business:
And day by day the Lord added
to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:47b)
Congregational Sabbath. Less doing. More being.
Photo from www.sxc.hu #563301
