Members, Don't Count

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.

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