Doing Away with Membership

A church in Raleigh, North Carolina has done away with membership as a way of "belonging" to church.  Instead, they encourage their people to embrace another way of viewing their relationship to their local church and its mission: ownership. 

Clubs, gyms and book clubs have memberships and they are "painless to obtain and even easier to discard," according to some of the leaders of this Vintage Church.  I get that.  I have a membership to the YMCA that I have ignored for more than a year.  My "participation" in my membership at the Y has only been sporadic at best.  Membership means very little in today's culture.  Ownership, however, implies an investment and an interest in the wellbeing of the Church and its mission.  If followers of Christ are co-heirs of his kingdom, we possess a piece of this kingdom; we own it.  "An owner makes the organization happen," leaders of Vintage say. "Jesus wants his followers to make the church happen—go out and love people, nurture each other, and serve with your whole life. Ownership is a higher call than membership."

The same is true of fellowship - our word for this week.  Membership, alone, does not describe what is necessary for true, biblical fellowship to take place.  Ownership does.  Remember in Genesis 4, after Cain has killed his brother Abel, when God comes and asks Cain where Abel is?  Cain responds, "I don't know.  Am I my brother's keeper?"  Wrong answer.  The fact that Cain would answer in such a way, I think, demonstrates his sin.  He has not taken ownership in the fellowship God intended them to have with one another.  He has not taken onwership of his own sin or his part in the broken relationship with his brother.  When you and I fail to take ownership in the church, to invest in one another and the mission with our presence, time, energy, relationships and ministry gifts - when we fail to share our lives with one another, or to get together and to get real with one another - we, too, devalue what it means to be a part of the Church.  We are our brother's keeper.  We are our sister's keeper.

In whom has God called you to invest?  With whom might you get together and get real this week?