Club Membership

 I have never been a member of a club. I have known members of various clubs (the Lions, the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and even the Odd Fellows). I am told that these clubs offer enjoyable fellowship and that they engage in worthwhile service projects. But this week I learned something else. Most of the clubs have rules regarding attendance. If a member skips meetings he may have to make up for the missed meetings in some way. I never knew that; but Sinclair Ferguson included the rules of the Trenton, N.J. Rotary club in his latest book, Devoted to God’s Church.

Why did he do that?

Well, I am sure that it was not because he wanted us to join the local Rotary Club. He was making a point and making it rather well. People think that they are entitled to drift in and out of the church when and as they please. They want to be considered members and want to be granted all the benefits of membership, but they do not want to be held accountable to any standard of behavior. They certainly do not want to be told that they must attend meetings of the church, or that they will suffer any consequence if they are sporadic in their attendance.

Do you really believe that church membership is less a privilege and blessing than is membership in the Rotary Club? If Rotary members accept the premise that you must attend the meetings to continue as a member in good standing, why would anyone question the same principle in connection with the church? If a Rotary member moves from one local branch of the club to another, he accepts the fact that he must acknowledge this shift in the location of his membership. Why do so many Christians put up a fuss over a similar expectation in the church?

To drop the club illustration and use a more biblical one, Christ is the vine and we are the branches (John 15). Every branch must be firmly connected to thrive; and to be connected one must be connected at some given point along the length of the vine. It is possible to move a branch from one part of the vine to another. If a branch is cut loose from one part and carefully grafted in somewhere else on the vine, it may thrive in the new location. But a branch that is moved from one part of the vine to another but is never firmly connected in the new location, will not thrive and may well die.

We need to take our membership in the body of Christ more seriously. Christ died for the church (Acts 20:28). We are called to live for the church.