Restoring Regenerate Church Membership

By and large, in our day, church membership has really lost much of its biblical meaning. Centrally, the loss has been seen in compromising the principle of regenerate church membership. For example, it has been said that the typical Southern Baptist church has 233 members, but only 70 are present at the regular Sunday service of worship. The obvious question is, where are the other 163 members? Could it be they are at home sick, in a nursing home, on vacation, or in the military? Some may fit these categories, but not all 163. The painful truth is, the majority of the church membership are members in name only but not in fact. In other words, their names may be listed in the church records as "members", but there is no physical nor spiritual evidence that they are indeed faithful disciples of Christ.

In the rural South, where I pastor, this problem is pandemic. Church membership is more of a form of "fire insurance" (i.e., to keep the sinner out of hell) or a sentimental family tradition ("Mom, Dad, and my Grandparents were members, so I guess I'll join too"). What makes this situation even worse, is that many pastors who are obsessed exclusively with "numerical" church growth, will compromise the gospel commands to savingly believe on Christ alone and repent, for shallow decisions which results in bloated membership rolls of unconverted sinners. Recently commenting on this problem in Southern Baptist life, Dr. David Dockery (president of Union University) observed:

"It seems to me that we are doing harm to the person and to the church by allowing them to stay on the roll. One thing worse than people being lost in their sins is lost people who think they are saved because their names are on a church roll."

The obvious challenge confronting churches with unregenerate church membership is recovering and maintaining the biblical ideal of a church membership that is genuinely saved. But how can this be done? Where can such a recovery begin? The restoration of regenerate church membership must start by reinstating three Scriptural practices that were once common in evangelical churches (especially Baptist churches): first, there must be great care given in the receiving of new members. Many churches are hasty, careless, and irresponsible in how they receive prospective church members. Rather than looking for spiritual fruit that points to a true conversion, they look only for someone's base desire to join - as if they are joining a community club or the local gym. The Bible however teaches us that we are not to lay our hands on anyone hastily lest we share in their sins (I Tim.5:22). The context of this mandate is affirming and receiving men into public ministry. Yet, there is a principle that can be applied here to church membership: prospective church members should only be affirmed by the church if their testimony, character, and understanding of the gospel is biblical. Questions like, how is a sinner made right with God? who is Jesus Christ? what is sin? what confidence do you have that God accepts you? why do you believe you're a Christian, and what is the gospel? - should be asked of any who wish to join a church. Endorsing strongly this careful approach to receiving new members, Mark Dever once said:

"Guard carefully the front door and open the back door. In other words, make it more difficult to join...and make it easier to be excluded...the path to life is narrow, not broad. Doing this will help churches recover their divinely intended distinction from the world."

Second, there must be the faithful practice of formative and corrective church discipline. Many churches fail in one or both of these types of biblical discipline. And the result has been a membership of gross spiritual immaturity, the spread of false doctrine, divisive relationships, and all-out unrestrained sin. Together however, both formative and corrective church discipline maintain a level of spiritual healthiness that separates the church from the world by upholding a Christ-exalting purity of doctrine and life (see Matt.18:15-17; Rom.16:17-18; Gal.6:1-2; Eph.4:11-16). In short, they provide a boundary for all members which makes a clear distinction between the sheep and the goats.

Finally, there must be a formal commitment to maintain God-honoring relationships. This means having a written church covenant that spells out the church's mutual obligations to fulfill all of Scripture's "one another" passages (e.g., Jn.13:34,35; Rom.12:10; Heb.10:24,25). Keeping such a covenant clarifies the spiritual & relational commitments that church membership biblically signifies.

Corrective Church Discipline: The Missing Mark

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. once wrote these sobering words concerning the lack of church discipline in most evangelical churches:

"The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other."

Dr. Mohler went on to say that he believed church discipline to be "the missing mark" in most churches; and thus the proof, that "Christ has abandoned many churches who are blissfully unaware of His departure."

This assessment and observation is no doubt strong but painfully true. For the "deadness" which is seen and felt in so many local churches, can be largely attributed to the absence of church discipline which results in the absence of Christ's felt presence and power (see Matt.18:20). Even in churches where there is a large attendance of people with exciting music and a myriad of programs, if there is no practice of church discipline, then all appearance of "spiritual life" is only an illusion of something that is in truth, base carnality.

Biblically speaking, church discipline has two sides: first, there is formative discipline. This is carried out by the regular teaching of God's Word, the example of Christian living, and the mutual ministry of the collective members who make up the body of Christ. Its goal is the instruction and edification of Christ's church as a gathered community of His people (Rom.12:1-16; I Cor.12:4-27; Eph.4:11-13). This form of church discipline is attempted in most churches to a greater or lesser degree.

It is the other side of church discipline however which has gone missing from a vast majority of local congregations. This is called corrective discipline. Concerning the nature and form of this type of discipline, Mark Dever noted: "[It] is the act of excluding an individual who carelessly brings disrepute onto the gospel and shows no commitment to do otherwise...[it] helps the church to reflect God's glorious character faithfully [and] it helps the church to remain holy. It's an attempt to polish the mirror and remove the specks." To say it another way, corrective church discipline is that special means of grace whereby the church helps wayward members to return to the path of holiness which they have left due to sin (see Matt.18:15-17; I Cor.5:1-13; Gal.6:1-2; II Thess.3:14-15).

Now it might seem strange to describe corrective church discipline as "loving". How could something so negative be so loving? The truth is, there is nothing more "unloving" and even hateful, that to knowingly allow fellow Christians to pursue a path of sin. As members of Christ's body we are responsible for the spiritual welfare of one another (Gal.6:2; Heb.10:24). It therefore matters for the internal health of the church, the external witness of the church, and the faithful display of God's glory by the church, to rescue, restore, and if necessary, exclude sinning members.

But when churches fail to carry out corrective discipline they are sending a damning message to those inside and outside of their congregations. To those inside, they are saying, "You can be a Christian without repentance and holiness"; and to those outside, they are saying, "Jesus is not a Savior who saves from sin but He condones all sin." In both cases, the absence of corrective discipline perverts the message of the gospel and denies the Lordship of Jesus Christ.