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 […]
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Church membership is important because it facilitates church growth. One reason church membership may seem unimportant is that we have forgotten the responsibility each Christian has for building up the church. Ephesians 4:11-12 corrects this: And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work
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Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them.” But how can a Christian know who his leaders are? It was probably easy to tell in the early church where there was one primary group of Christians in each city with one team of elders. But in the modern American church, this is no
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Why is church membership important? One reason is that it protects Christians from drifting away from Christ. (See the other reasons here.) God warns us: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12). How can we guard against
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Does the formality of church membership work against authentic fellowship? It turns out formal commitment is the best route to authentic fellowship. We tend to think relationships lead to commitment, but it’s the other way around. Just like cohabiting before marriage leads to higher divorce rates, noncommittal church attendance leads to weak fellowship. The early
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Why is church membership important? One reason is that it helps us do what Jesus has commanded us to do. Jesus is Lord, which means that we need to obey His 1,000+ commands in the New Testament. Of course, we cannot obey our way into heaven, but “this is the love of God, that we
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