People Need the Church
Do People Need the Church?
At some point in your life, you’ve probably wondered if church really matters. Isn’t it enough to love God and to be in a relationship with God?
We live in a day and age where you can listen to and sing along with some of the best worship music that has ever been written and recorded. Not only can you listen in your car, you can watch top quality musicians and worship leaders on YouTube and join right in with some of the best produced worship music videos you’ve ever seen.
Not only that, you can listen to some of the best preaching from anywhere on the planet. You can listen when you’re driving, exercising, or you can sit and watch amazing preachers at home and take notes and listen and learn at your convenience.
Do you really need to go to church? Do you really need the church? Do you really need to be a member of the church?
Membership Matters
According to our friends over at American Express…
“Membership has its privileges.”
I’m sure if you’re a member with American Express, you could tell us all about these benefits and privileges you get to enjoy when you pay their annual fee and you get their credit card. You pay for the membership and you get to enjoy the privileges.
Personally, I’m not a member of American Express, but I am a member of a gym.
A few years ago me and my son joined Texas Family Fitness. And you know how a gym membership works, you pay a small monthly fee and you get to enjoy the privileges of being a member.
People that don’t have a membership, they don’t get to enjoy those same privileges. They can’t even get passed the front desk!
But because we’re members, because we pay the monthly fee to be a member, we can…
- Come to the gym and workout whenever we want as long as they are open.
- If we don’t want to go, we don’t have to go. They don’t care if we don’t show up as long as we pay our monthly dues.
- We can use any of their services or equipment that we pay for including things like exercise classes, weights and machines, we could take advantage of child care if we needed it, we have access to talk to their trainers, and more.
What makes me a member in good standing at the gym is not how often I go to the gym, how strong I become, how many things they offer that I take advantage of, or how many people I know by name.
What makes me a member in good standing at the gym is having a current credit card on file!
For many of us, we have unintentionally equated church membership with our gym membership, our American Express membership, our Costco membership, or whatever it is we are a member of.
However, church membership is NOT anything like that.
But… We’ve treated church membership like that, haven’t we?
We’ve all thought… I know I haven’t been to church in a while, but I still give online every month. I know I haven’t been as plugged in or as involved as I once was, but I go when I can. I know we’ve been busy, we’ve been out of town, we’ve just had a lot going on the last few months, but that’s still my church and I’ll be there when I can.
We consider ourselves members even if we are not faithful attenders.
And because of that many churches have moved away from using membership language. I understand why. We’ve made membership something you pay for. We’ve made membership something exclusive, not inclusive. We’ve made membership something that gives you access and certain privileges if you’re able to be a member.
I understand, the word membership has a lot of baggage. It means something different now than maybe it once did.
But, I would love to reclaim this word because, and this is important, the word member is a biblical word.
If it was a trendy word we had come up with I would be more than willing to discard it and find another word, but this is a word used purposefully throughout scripture to describe our relationship to God and to one another.
So What Does it Mean to be a Member?
What does it mean to be a member of God’s church?
To be a member of God’s church certainly has its privileges, but church membership isn’t so much about what you get as it is about to Whom you belong.
Today what I want to do is reclaim this word for the church because I believe the word member is a biblical word that carries life and death consequences.
This word, member, is used over and over and over again by the Apostle Paul. It appears sixteen times across three different letters that he wrote.
You could say it is one of his favorite ways to talk about and think about why church matters.
In a letter written by the Apostle Paul to one of the first Christian churches, Paul uses this word over and over again. In so many ways, this church is learning what it means to be the church and why church matters.
Listen to how Paul describes the church here in 1 Corinthians 12.12-27:
12 For just as the body is one and has many MEMBERS, and all the MEMBERS of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all BAPTIZED into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
How do you become a member of the body of Christ?
This is part of what happens in and through your baptism. In your confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, your decision to be buried with Christ in baptism and resurrected into new life. This spiritual practice has eternal significance. It has relational repercussions. And in a very real way it connects you to the body of Christ.
Every Member Matters
Paul continues this idea with these words…
14 For the body does not consist of one MEMBER but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the MEMBERS in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single MEMBER, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts [MEMBERS], yet one body.
I don’t think I have to spend a lot of time explaining this. We get it. Our hands, our feet, our eyes and ears, are all members of our body. If any one of those members wanted to stop being a member of the body, something would be lost.
Why?
Because every member has a purpose. Every member has a function. Every member is important.
Different members have different parts to play, absolutely. But every member is vital to the body being able to do and be what the body was created to do and be.
And every part of the body NEEDS every other part of the body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts [MEMBERS] of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the MEMBERS may have the same care for one another. 26 If one MEMBER suffers, all suffer together; if one MEMBER is honored, all rejoice together.
I don’t know about you but when I stub my toe in the middle of the night my whole body hurts. Whenever I get a headache it shuts my whole body down. At the same time, when I get dressed up for a date night with my wife and she tells me I look handsome, I feel good all over.
Our bodies are made up of many different members, but every member is vital, important, special, and needed. And what Paul wants to help these early Christians see, what he wants all Christians in every place across all the ages to understand, is this important truth…
27 Now you are (COLLECTIVELY) the body of Christ and individually MEMBERS of it.
Eleven times in these seventeen verses Paul uses the word “MEMBER” to talk about what it means to be the church and why being a member of the church matters.
Dismembered?
For the Apostle Paul, it is incredibly important that you see yourself as a member of the church because as a believer in Jesus you are a member of the body of Christ!
This is the metaphor Paul chooses, and while every metaphor eventually breaks down, this one is pretty good. When you think about the human body, even if you’re not a medical doctor you know it’s ridiculous to imagine any member of your body saying, “I’m out of here. I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be a part of the body any longer.”
If any part of your body did that, no matter how important or not important you think it is, if any member of your body decided to be dis-membered, decided to separate itself from your body, you know what would happen to that part, that member of your body, it would die!
Every member of the body is vital, important, and has to stay connected to experience life.
If you’re struggling today this may be why.
Are you connected or disconnected to the body of Christ?
What is our Goal as Members of the Body of Christ?
If you keep reading, you turn the page to 1 Corinthians 14.1 and you see what Paul says next. What’s most important for us as members of the body of Christ? It’s LOVE!
“Let love be your highest goal!”
Why would Paul say that?
Why is love so important for those of us who are members of the body of Christ?
If you’re a member at your local gym, love really isn’t in the equation. You might love that gym. You might even love some of the people at that gym. But if you had to change gyms tomorrow you could. If you’re a member at Costco you might love Costco, but you could shift gears and shop somewhere else if you had to.
The kind of love Paul is talking about here isn’t that kind of love. The kind of love Paul is talking about here is the same kind of love Jesus talked about with his disciples.
“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.” – John 13.34, NLT
How are we to love members of the body of Christ? The same way Jesus loved. With a self sacrificing kind of love. The kind of love that willingly lays down its life for the sake of the other.
We let this kind of love be our highest goal!
Why? Because people need God. Absolutely. But people also need people. More specifically,
People need the people of God. People need the church.
People Need the Church
I can stand here today and say, I am a better person because of all of you. Because I belong to God’s church. Because I have been a part of God’s church.
In a sense, I’ve been a member of the church all my life. I think I was at church the Sunday after I was born and I’ve rarely missed a Sunday since.
And what I’ve learned through this lifelong experience of belonging to the church, being a member of the body of Christ, is that when it matters most, when you need it most, the church is God’s answer for every difficulty you face.
The church was there for me when I was ready to be baptized and they welcomed me into the family of God.
The church was there for me and my family when we were sick, or when we were grieving a loss, or when we were celebrating new births or significant moments.
The church has showed up for me and my family when we needed help. When our family was far away the church has stood in the gap for me and my kids. When we needed food, a helping hand, wise counsel, encouragement, or anything at all… it’s been God’s church that has stepped in and helped us in our time of need.
You see…
Every member matters to the body of Christ.
And here’s what happens, when we are a part of the body of Christ, when we love each other the way Christ loves us, we have the opportunity to share the love of Christ with the world around us and invite them to become a part of God’s family.
Membership matters because a dismembered body has no opportunity to witness to the abundant life found in belonging to, being a member of the body of Christ because dismembered bodies die. Division kills churches.
This is why so many churches are dying in America, they are dismembered. They are divided.
Growing churches, thriving and flourishing churches, these are churches where the members of the body of Christ see themselves connected, see every member as a member of immeasurable value and worth, where unity in diversity is celebrated as the body of Christ.
We need the church. Yes.
But everybody needs the church. People need the church.
People don’t just need people, people need God’s people.
The Church Needs You
Maybe today it’s time to get re-engaged in the body of Christ. To remember you matter.
In so many ways the church is always trying to accomplish it’s mission with one hand tied behind its back because that hand decided it wasn’t needed, or it was too busy to show up, or it just got out of the habit of being present.
But the church needs you. We need you. Every member matters.
The other day I walked into the gym, I scanned my card to check in, and the very nice lady at the front desk let me know that the credit card I had on file was about to expire. I needed to update my payment method or… I could no longer be a member!
On Sunday, when you walk into church, you don’t have to scan a card to know that you belong. Your membership isn’t based on paying your dues.
When you become a part of the church, when you confess Jesus as Lord and are baptized into Christ you become a member of the body of Christ. And every member has a part to play. Every member matters.
Your presence matters. Your gifts matter. You matter. When you are not here you are missed. We need you. The church needs you. Because every member matters.
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