Romanticism vs. church membership in "Is Church Membership Biblical?"

[G. N. Barkman]

Mike,

If someone listed in the directory is found to be living in adultery, and refuses to repent, what does your Assembly do?

We would follow the church discipline process outlined in scripture. If carried out to the end we would follow the biblical command to “regard him as a heathen” and he would be unwelcome at the Lord’s Table and he would need to be evangelized.

[Ron Bean]

It appears to be that no membership leads to a passive church. Who makes the decisions regarding how money from offerings is dispensed including the pastor’s salary? Who designates church officers, elders, deacons, or the next pastor?

The Bible explicitly gives the responsibility of distributing funds to the deacons so our deacons do that.

The Bible implicitly gives the responsibility of choosing elders (biblically the same as pastor) and deacons to those who are currently in leadership (e.g. Paul commands Timothy to appoint overseers). In short, our elders choose deacons and other elders. The Bible doesn’t explicitly state how leaders or officers are to be chosen. I think you could argue from Acts 6 that a congregation chooses deacons, but as for the selection of elders, it would seem strange to have the sheep choose their shepherd.

[Doug Flynn]

MikeJ wrote:

@DougFlynn

Yes, he gives biblical commands that, he supposes, absolutely cannot be done without the extra biblical practice of keeping a church membership roll. He doesn’t explain why the church membership roll itself is biblical.

Fortunately the Bible has given us two great ways of determining who is in the church and who isn’t: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Unfortunately we don’t take these as seriously as we should.

How does that not constitute some sort of identification of membership from your perspective? Are you saying it is unbiblical to keep records?

Not anti-biblical, but non-biblical and not biblically required or even necessary

It seems that the discussion here is really about formal membership vs. presumed membership. To draw a picture, when my family finally joined Calvary Baptist in Rochester, we’d been attending for over a year and even had started working in AWANA. We took part in business meetings, just about the whole nine yards.

The big thing I can see as an advantage to formalizing membership is that it is a bit of a barrier to the coup d’etats that some try to pull in church meetings, and it formalizes who is eligible for church office. Obviously not enough of a barrier, but a barrier nonetheless.

I think I know that church ;)

I believe Bert made my point. I framed my questions to try to show that a church that endeavors to be truly Biblical, must have a way to identify who is accountable to the church, and a way to exercise discipline in cases of grievous unrepentant sin. The church may claim to practice no membership, but their actions require some recognition of who is, and who is not accountable to the church. When you identify those people, they are “church members,” even if you don’t maintain a formal membership roll.

“The Bible explicitly gives the responsibility of distributing funds to the deacons so our deacons do that.”

Where is this explicitly taught. I see the deacons in Acts 6 given the responsibility of distributing to the widows by serving tables (which seems to imply food) but nothing about overseeing the church’s finances or setting the pastor’s salary, etc.

[Ron Bean]

“The Bible explicitly gives the responsibility of distributing funds to the deacons so our deacons do that.”

Where is this explicitly taught. I see the deacons in Acts 6 given the responsibility of distributing to the widows by serving tables (which seems to imply food) but nothing about overseeing the church’s finances or setting the pastor’s salary, etc.

Hmm…it seems I was wrong on that count. So yes, nothing in the Bible explicitly states who ought to be in charge of finances, much like it does not explicitly state that churches should have a formalized process of admitting members. Now I’m wondering what the original question had to do with formal church membership.