BLOG 10.8.12: THE ENIGMA OF “CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.”
The enigma of church membership? What’s that all about?
Right off: “church membership” is a designation that is never, anywhere, even mentioned in New Testament documents. Rather, what Jesus came announcing was a whole and radically new creation, and a new race of men and women, i.e., a “new humanity” (to borrow from J. B. Philips). This is what Jesus and the kingdom of God are all about.
At the threshold of this thrilling announcement of the new creation is the accompanying awareness that it was for this that all creation had been waiting. It was that creation in which all should be put to rights, and recreated again into God’s true purpose. It is what the apostle Paul repetitively spoke of as the “mystery hidden from the ages” that has now has been revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and his teachings.
Yet, also at the threshold of this overwhelming announcement is also the command: repent and believe this joyous news. Jesus’ calling was of such a radical newness that it required of the responders the need for a totally and radically new mind—hence the word: repent, which translates as: a change of mind. It also requires of the responders a fervent embrace of Jesus, who is the Door into this new reality, and of the knowledge of who he is and of our obedient response to his commands.
This is where the term: disciple enters in. It indicates one being taught and formed (disciplined, if you will) into the likeness of the discipler, who in our case is Jesus himself. So Paul will pray (agonize in childbirth) for his spiritual children in Galatia, until Christ is formed in them. He will use himself as a model and tell the Corinthians to be imitators of him as he is also of Christ.
But it is Jesus himself who gives his final mandate to his followers (us) to “go make disciples,” and then spells it out, that this involves teaching these disciples to obey all that Jesus has taught. Or Jesus saying that those who are truly his disciples are those who hear his word and do it. Paul will make several references to believers being renewed or recreated in knowledge, or in true righteousness and in their intimate relationship with the God and father of our Lord Jesus.
Note: there is never any word about “church membership.” An ostensible Christian community that only invites folk into its membership … is marketing the community, but certainly not calling people to discipleship in God’s new creation. Such membership requires no repentance or faith. Bonhoeffer calls it: “cheap grace.”
We are called to come together, certainly, but when and where that gathering takes place, the gathered disciples are to “teach and admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Cf. Colossians 3). They are expected to be disciples.
Discipleship begins with dynamic repentance in which we are committed to being changed into the image of Jesus, and by embracing him as Lord of our lives, and as our faithful Savior by his own obedience: his incarnation, his teachings, his life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.
There are vast numbers of passive “religious Christians” (to borrow from Bonhoeffer) who are content to “go to church” and there to observe a well produced “worship service” but who have no awareness of the demands of discipleship. There’s the enigma.
And whose responsibility is it to make disciples? That’s for a future Blog. Peace!
