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?

Sing, Shout, Jump, Dance!

This week, a rather light post.  On Sunday we looked at worship in Psalm 66 and one of the points I lifted up for consideration was how often commands like "sing" and "shout" pop up in the pages of Scripture.  As adults, of course, we sometimes struggle with such commands as we fear obeying them may make us look foolish or reveal our lack of talent for such things.

KBAM (Kids' Bible Adventure @ Miller) started on Sunday evening and I was struck by the straightforward lack of concern for what others might think of these kids as they worshiped God with songs and shouting and jumping and dancing.  The psalmist would have been pleased.  Even more fun to watch, of course, are the wonderful teens and adults who also jumped right in - equally unconcerned with the opinions of others.  Enjoy this video from our opening night of worship at KBAM.

Fully Alive!

Irenaeus, an early leader in the Church, who died toward the end of the second century, once said,  "The glory of God is man fully alive."  What he meant by that is that we give the most glory to God - we worship him to the our fullest capacity - when we become what human beings were created to be.  

Our Know Statement for Sunday's sermon was: Apprentices worship God by living transformed lives.  That's not all there is to worship, of course.  But the art of presenting ourselves as living sacrifices is all about being transformed.  If worship is living transformed and transforming lives, and if discipleship is the means by which we are transformed, then it follows that discipleship is a form of worship.  You and I worship God when we become more like Christ.  Christ is the prototype of what it means to be truly human and "fully alive."  The process of becoming more like the prototype is discipleship.

To be certain, discipleship does require something of us, of course: there is a cost.  But the late Dallas Willard famously challenges us not to talk so much about "the cost of discipleship" that we neglect to consider "the cost of non-discipleship."  In other words, seeking to be transformed more and and more into the image of Christ can be a painful and challenging process, but it is far worse to remain just as we are.  He writes,

The cost of discipleship is great, but the cost of non-discipleship far greater. . .Non-discipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).

I've quoted that passage from Willard time and time again.  It is one of my favorites because it reminds me that though discipleship asks me to deny myself and take up my cross, there is blessing and tremendous value added to my life in the process as well.   When I engage in this worship/discipleship/apprenticeship process, herky-jerky as it is from time to time, I am moving toward that fully human, fully alive state of being through which my very existence gives glory to God. I am worshiping God at the most fundamental level!

May we all find the grace to dwell in the overlap between this present age and the age to come this week and always.  May we all worship God with all that we are and all that we are becoming.  Amen.