Why is church membership important? One big reason is that it employs the Holy Spirit.
I once developed some teaching materials based in 1 Corinthians 12 about the spiritual gifts. At the end of each lesson, I wanted to point the students toward something practical they could do in discerning their unique spiritual giftedness.
After the first three of these lessons, a clear pattern emerged: in order to discover and use your spiritual gifts, you must devote yourself to serving other Christians. The gifts make no sense on their own. They can only be used in relation to other believers. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7).
If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you, empowering some form of ministry to your fellow Christians. You’re more than a spectator. As you learn to walk by the Spirit, you’ll have words of wisdom, surges of faith, moments of discernment or maybe something completely different. But you will have something to offer to the church.
Church membership gives you a platform, a playing field on which to live out the Holy Spirit’s work in your life.
