David Fry on Healthy Membership

At our 2022 Healthy Church Conference, David Fry spoke in the third, Friday morning session on the topic of Healthy Membership. His points were drawn from Colossians 2:19, Ephesians 4:16, and the book of 1 Corinthians. Church membership is designed by God to increase harmony and holiness in the church.

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SPEAKER_02 0:01

Membership is, in scripture, what distinguishes believers from unbelievers.

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You're listening to a special episode of the Holy Joys Podcast. The following audio was recorded at the first annual Healthy Church Conference in Frankfurt, Indiana. Join us next year on August 24th to 26th.

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The session is Healthy Membership. And I teach a class here, a six-week class on church membership. And it's not just going through the church manual talking about what that means here, but it's actually going through scripture and looking at what God says about church membership. And I've come to this conclusion, I've come to the conclusion that I had no clue until I took a serious look at God's word what church membership was all about. We have several churches represented here. But my guess is every single one of our churches we have people who are proven faithful Christians, followers of Christ with all their heart, who have been so for years, who are not members of the local church. And when I say that, I mean that they are they're they have not been welcomed into sort of that inner sanctum of the body where they participate in the decision makings of that church. I would guess that's probably true for every church that's represented. My hope to at least make some progress in convincing you that that's uh that's a problem. Uh that's a problem if we want to take God's word seriously. And it depending on all the reasons why, it may be a more serious problem. And there are a lot of reasons, we may or may not get into that. I want to begin with the Colossians chapter 2, verse 19. The reason I have this graphic up here is because this is what this verse says. It says, the head, who is Christ, the head holds the whole body together. The head holds the whole body together. With its joints and ligaments. Now that with is very, very important. This word here carries a lot of meaning because it tells us, at least in part, how it is that the head Christ chooses to hold the whole body together. And he chooses to hold the whole body together with its various members. And so if one ligament says to another joint, I don't need you in this body, or what are you doing here? Or what is your purpose? What do you think you're doing, or you don't belong, then we are interfering with what the head is trying to do with the whole body. And who do who do I think I am if I'm the one who decides which joints and which ligaments get to hold the body together? Membership is, in scripture, what distinguishes believers from unbelievers. How would you describe typical church membership today? What distinguishes believers from other believers in different denominations. Okay. Membership is what distinguishes some believers from other believers, right? That's what happens. Now, we we look at that, we look at what scripture says, uh, and we we look at our own context, and uh and and I don't think anyone here would say, well, you know, there there are some serious differences between congregations, there's some serious differences, perhaps even theologically, even within a congregation. Those things have to be considered. We're gonna talk about harmony here in just a moment. Uh, there has to be a harmony. There must be a harmony. Um, but we need to start with this understanding. If we're going to have a healthy church, a healthy church with unhealthy membership is not going to remain a healthy church. I say this a lot, especially in the the addiction world. I find myself saying this even to myself, but to people who are struggling with uh, say, heroin or or they're struggling with an immoral relationship. I say this all the time. I say, you know, it's sometimes it's extremely difficult to do things God's way, but doing things God's way is always and the only good way.

unknown 4:58

That's right.

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If we think we can do it better, it will always fail. And we may convince ourselves for some length, for for even for generations, we may convince ourselves that we have figured out a way to do things better. But I think we need to come back to scripture in every place where membership and body language, it's a metaphor that's used in scripture, everywhere it's used, is always used to distinguish believers not from other believers, but from unbelievers. So what is a what is healthy church membership? What is healthy church membership? Let me ask you a question. I'm gonna go ahead and assume that there are probably people in your congregation who are proven believers, followers of Christ, but they're not members. Someone tell me uh some possible reasons why they may not be members. What are some reasons why? Yes. You can't measure up to the handbook or you can't okay, all right. So the rules are restrictive in some way, all right? Somebody else? They all think it's important. They all think it's important, right? Why? They may be used already in ministry, they do all the things that a member would do except maybe vote. Uh so why, what difference does membership make, right? Okay, what else? The church doesn't buy membership. Uh yeah, this is never mentioned. I've had people say, oh, Pastor never talks about it. I I weren't even sure we had membership, right? So it's just not no, there's no discussion. Uh and yes, I've been, I've I've been there. I've I've I've even myself I've I've had that desire to let's not even say anything about it, right? It's just not saying about it, right? Um, and and that's uh there are a lot of churches that have chosen to do that. I I don't think that's that's God's plan. You you lose you lose a lot of scripture. Uh we're gonna look at this uh this bookmark in a moment. You lose a lot of these if you don't have healthy membership. Uh you do. Okay, any other reason? They may be worried about accountability or responsibility. Yeah, okay, all right. So they're worried about accountability, so uh they're they're yeah, so it may be and another thing that goes along with that is uh I've heard this repeatedly for years. People say, well, if what membership means and the way they've experienced is that I essentially submit myself to the pastor, so whatever the pastor says, even to the extent that the pastor's knocking on my door if I didn't pay to get my tithe checked in on Sunday, you know, that happens, right? In this community. Uh so not in this church, right? Not in this church. So, but but it's happened. I've had people said their pastors have done that. The control, that's crazy, right? Whether it's the pastor or it could be uh some other leader who just kind of dictates what all the members have to do, right? So um, all right, so so what is healthy church membership? Uh, I want to give you a couple of words here that come from the Apostle Paul's manual on church membership, uh otherwise known as the first letter to the Corinthians. Uh, it is it's a manual on membership. And in this uh manual, there are two recurring themes, and uh we're not gonna go through 1 Corinthians today, but I'll show you a couple verses. There are two recurring themes from the beginning to the end that just intertwine, and they are the themes of unity and purity. So let me give you an example here from 1 Corinthians 1 2, right off the bat, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified, means holy ones, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, again, same root word, holy ones, together. There's your unity word, with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I should have highlighted the last line there, both their Lord and ours. You see the the intertwining of these two themes of unity and purity? Unity and purity. And uh the truth is that uh membership is a tension between these two, maintaining the two of the four marks of the church, unity and purity. These these two words, of course, appear in uh the Nicene Creed, uh, where in that third article of the Holy Spirit it says, I believe in one holy Catholic, that means you uh universal, and apostolic church. The reason I put it like this is because I want you to notice a correlation. So these are called the four marks of the church. One, holy, Catholic, versal, aposai. Uh unity, purity, universality, apostolicity. Those are the four marks of the church. But there's a correspondence here. The unity and the universality, there's a court, there's a correspondence. Unity not only locally, but with all other believers. Purity, not only personally in your life, but also in keeping the faith passed down from the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit. There's a correspondence in these two. Church membership is designed by God to bring all of this together. And again, we see this in what I call the Bible's manual on church membership, 1 Corinthians. A healthy church is one for which membership is designed, intentionally designed to increase these two. But let me change the words here: harmony and holiness. This is unity and purity. I think this is that we could say this is Paul's message in part, at least in 1 Corinthians, uh, the letter to the Corinthians. A healthy church is one in which membership is designed. Whatever it looks like in your church, and I know here in our church, we have pretty much ongoing, we're looking, we're examining, we're we're looking at our own church life, we're looking at God's word, and we're comparing, we're looking back at our church manual, we're saying, okay, is this God's word? Is this tradition? Is this does this match our values? What how does this fit? And and and there are things in our church manual that are that are not necessarily required by God's word, but it fits a value that we have, and so it's still there, those sorts of things. You have to have those conversations because what we're aiming for, what we ought to aim for in membership is is this promoting, is this increasing within our congregation harmony and holiness? Both. Now, let me give you another scripture. This is uh another passage that uh I again over six weeks we break this passage down, and I'm gonna try to do this about five minutes, but uh I put it on here kind of section by section because I want us to really take this in almost word for word. God, God makes the whole body. Remember the previous one, right? Colossians says the head holds. By the way, who owns the church? I preached a sermon one time uh at Brent, Alabama, called Who Owns the Church? Well, Matthew 16, right, verse 18, Jesus says, uh, I'm giving you the keys, I will build my church. I will build my church. And then he extends by giving the keys to the apostles, he extends and says, I'm going to allow you to have some semblance of ownership, which is responsibility, but you're doing this for me. That's right. Because he never gives to us his headship, he doesn't give to us his headship, but he does extend his authority to the church, which is why we have ordination as well. That's why, that's why uh local church, we're getting ready to maybe record a podcast on ordination of elders within the local church. Uh something else we've lost uh within our our tradition. We've just kind of forgotten. It's part of our tradition, we've forgotten about it. Um we we've we've uh but it's time to recover that. So beginning of the scripture, uh God makes the whole body, he built his church, but he makes the body fit together perfectly, completely, in a way that he sees will increase the health of the whole. Now I know you and I can look at each other, we can look at memory and say, well, why what in the world do they contribute? They just they you know they're they're so so on the other side of where I am on on things, and maybe maybe they're maybe they are just cranky, maybe their faith is in something else besides Christ, right? And what Christ wants to do to the church. That may be so. It may be so, and sometimes it takes a little while to discern that. Uh I I will be the first to admit that sometimes I'm very slow on discerning that. But nonetheless, God puts the whole body, he makes the whole body fit together perfectly, and then there's a period there, and then it continues. This is all in Ephesians 4, verse 16. It's one big long verse in Ephesians 4, 16, and it says, as each part does its own special work. Now that's a reference back to that Paul's making back to Romans 12, where he says in Romans chapter 12, verse 5, he says that God has designed each member of the body, has given each member its own function. I think that's the English Standard Version word, is each each member has its own function within the body. But so as each part, as each member does its own special work, what happens? What happens? By the way, how many realize this morning that the membership word is a metaphor that's used by the apostle Paul to refer to the church, right? It's a metaphor, and it's referring to the human body, and the church is the body of Christ. That's a metaphor, and each of us are members within that body. That's a metaphor that he's using the human body. Now, interesting, if you really wanted uh an interesting sermon, uh I could preach the sermon from 1 Corinthians 6 uh called What Does Uh Sex Have To Do with Church Membership? Because the first time that Paul refers to membership is in his conversation about sexual life of a husband and wife. I don't think we're gonna have time to get to that, but come back next year to help the church members, and I may well pick that up, all right? Yes. All right, but he continues. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts to grow, the other members, the other parts to grow. Because that's God's intent for the church is for the church to be the vessel in which we as individual believers grow in Him. So that the whole body, not just you as a member, but the whole body is three things healthy and growing and full of love. Ephesians 4.16. Um it's amazing. Ephesians 4, 11 through 16. Uh, it's a fairly lengthy, fairly lengthy verses there. That's two sentences that Paul puts together. In two sentences, he writes those verses. Uh of course we put the enumeration there, but uh he has these long, complex, somewhat confusing sentences that uh is every eighth-grade English student's nightmare. Uh try to diagram that. But uh that's what I'm trying to do here with with the fancy words, trying to help us to see a little emphasis, you know, so we have a little list here. The whole body, every part of the body would be healthy, growing, and full of love. Is that what church membership does in your church? Is that what it's doing in in our church right here? Um sometimes. Some people would say, yeah, and there are probably others who'd say, Oh, not for me. We need to look at that. All right, so that's it for the PowerPoint. I want to uh pass these out. So I'm gonna take a look at this here. Now, everyone in our church has like 20 of these. Uh just pass them on, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can just pass them back, and uh I have more.

unknown 18:07

You can take some of these back with you.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Now, I have I've had pastors say, hey, I that's really uh we'd really like to give these. Uh, this has our church logo on it, but I can give you the file and you can put your own church logo on it. Um but I'll tell you why this is so important. Because the New Testament gives us at 80 at least uh 88 times, they're different counts, but at least 88 times uh the New Testament. Uh you need some more back here. All right, here's the at least 88 times the New Testament gives particular commands to the church that have to do with the life of the church. What's the church to look like? How are members to relate to one another? What's our responsibility to one another? So, what I've done is I have condensed those into 20 categories, all right? 20 categories here uh that uh summarize those 80 plus occurrences, what we just call the one another commands. And uh so so let me ask you this question. Um let's just let's just take one uh here. So this would this is a fairly easy one. Hebrews 1024 says, assemble with one another. So you immediately think of what? Yeah, you think of your church services, your Sunday morning, or if you have a Sunday evening, or if you have a Wednesday, or whatever. You think that's what you think of, right? So that's uh that's easy enough to do. We can we can probably put a check mark, okay. We got that one down. We're pretty good church attenders. What about uh confessing your sins to one another? Uh does that happen on a Sunday morning? Should it happen on a Sunday morning? All right, until that, so make sure something will go out, right? Uh so when's that gonna happen? What about what about keeping one another from stumbling? And by the way, did you notice that of these 20? Again, these are summarizations of the dozens that appear in scripture, uh, but I'm pretty comfortable that they're all represented here.

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And this, what I'm about to tell you, represents the full statistic of all the occurrences.

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Uh, you'll notice that the last one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, the last eight, so eight of the twenty have to do with keeping or restoring one another from sin. All right, so so 40% of the one another commands, and again, I think this holds true if you were to count them all up of the 88 or so one another commands given to the church that tell us how members are to relate to other members, uh, about 40% of those have to do with keeping and restoring one another from sin. So when does that happen? When's that happen if our only the only time we ever get together is for face-forward assembling of ourselves, in which our attention is not on our neighbor, but on whoever is up front, speaking, singing, leading, and whatever needs to be led. That's not con that's not a setting that's conducive to most of these, at least at a deep level. You can do some of these things like encourage one another, uh, you know, encourage one another to do good works, uh, pray for well. You can do some of those at a fairly shallow level in a general assembly, right? You can't do that at a deep level. Uh, I use uh here, those those of you who attend here, I use this uh this kind of mental uh image of a spectrum of transparency. Transparency. Transparency from one to ten. Now let's be honest with this with ourselves. The only one with whom we are a 10 in transparency with is God. And we may not be 10 to that, but we may not even be that honest with God, right? At times. If you're married, hopefully you're a nine or somewhere in there, right? Hopefully you're close to that. But but you're none of us are. None of us are, just be honest. In a Sunday morning service, what do you think we are? A three, you think? A three, a two, a three? Yeah, a one? Yeah, two and a half, right? But you're somewhere down on the other end of the spectrum, right? You're somewhere way down here. Some of us, some of us are a one. Like we're we're not gonna, you're not gonna hear us give a testimony about what happened to us this week. Or yeah, you're not gonna hear us make any sort of confession in public in a public forum. Others, and you know who that somebody comes to mind, they will they will be up here at five or a six on a second morning, right? You know who I'm talking about, you guys, that'll be fine. Um and we all get we all get a little uncomfortable.

unknown 23:10

Right.

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Uh so my question is uh as a church, if we're gonna have healthy church, uh a healthy church and healthy church membership, uh we we've got to make sure that we make opportunity for believers within our first of all, first of all, we have to make sure that they they're a true believer, if they're a true follower of Christ, that they belong to the body. As long as they are willing to live in harmony with this congregation, first with Christ, right? With follow Christ as their head and live in harmony with this fellowship of believers, they ought to be able to belong. They should belong. Um, I understand that there is some dynamic in harmony because you bring you every member you bring into the body, you you realize you can imagine, right? Every member you bring into the body slightly shifts that dynamic just a little bit, right? You have someone who cut who comes from a total different background, maybe, maybe a total different church background, maybe no church background. They come in and they're gonna think, what was that all about? That conversation. I didn't understand. Why was that even a question? Why was that a question? Right? Because they'll well, here's some of the things we may talk about even this even today and have talked about, and they'll think, oh, I've never heard, I've never even heard that that was an issue. Right? They bring a different dynamic, and and that's going to impact what harmony looks like. Now, the easy thing is to say, well, they're just not in harmony with the rest of us, and so the easy thing is to just keep them out. Now, we didn't look at 1 Corinthians 12, uh, but we should. Um, how am I doing? Am I okay on time?

unknown 24:54

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

I got three minutes. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

That's fine.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

All right, that's fine. But I can do this and then we'll we'll stop. Um, but you know, 1 Corinthians 12, uh, there are two uh problems here that Paul mentions. Uh he says, first of all, uh, he says if the foot should say, this is first Corinthians 12, verse 15, he says the foot should say, because I'm not the hand, I do not belong to the body. That would not make it less any part of the body. The first the first challenge that we have uh within the church is people withdrawing themselves. Voluntarily, they just withdraw themselves. I don't belong. There may be a whole list of reasons, but they withdraw themselves. The other later, he says uh that the uh he says uh the I cannot say to the hand, I don't need you. That's exclusion. So you have two things happen. First, he talks about those who withdraw themselves, then he addresses those who are pushing others out. And he says, both of those are wrong. That does not foster harmony or holiness. So you may have to address those things within your congregation, but then the next thing would be would be to prayerfully consider this. If you are an influencer or leader in your uh congregation, ask yourself where are these things going to take place? And to be honest with you, this is the kind of stuff that takes place around those tables out there in the commons or in a room like this, uh, where people will, at breakfast on Sunday morning or you know, tonight they won't be here, but a group here tonight will be again another meal, where they confess and they hold one another account, they pray at a deeper level. Now, maybe uh maybe a five or six or a seven, where when they get up to the sanctuary, they go back into their number one or number two show, right? Which we all do.

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