At the members’ meeting of our church in May 1996, we faced a daunting task. The sixty or so of us there needed to go through a list of 256 names—more than half our membership—and remove them from our church roll.
We had been working on this for months. Some had suggested I simply make one motion to dismiss all the people at once. I decided against that. We had taken them in individually; we would dismiss them individually. It would be a kind of Chinese water torture to good ends. We would all be reminded of the significance of church membership.
The first challenge came when in the first few names there were a pair of twin boys who had been brought up in the church—thirty years earlier! One of the older members put up her hand and said, “But we know where those boys are!”
I believe God’s Spirit specially prompted our chairman of deacons, who responded calmly with just a touch of humor, “The problem isn’t that we don’t know where they are, but that they don’t seem to know where we are.”
Silence for a moment. Then gentle laughter.
The blockage broken, we were free to go on through the list, removing from membership even children and grandchildren of those sitting there in the meeting. Those who were perfectly able to attend but had not been doing so for months, even years, we removed.
I took pains that night, and throughout the process, to emphasize that what we were doing did not mean that we didn’t love these people. It didn’t mean they weren’t welcome here. There was no place in this world where we would love to see them more than back with us in church. It didn’t mean we thought they weren’t going to church anywhere. We just knew they weren’t coming to church here.
What membership means
Church membership is our public and corporate assent that a person is living as a disciple of Jesus. We could not realistically give that for people we did not see regularly.
We had labored for months to contact every member by phone and by letter. Some we simply couldn’t find. In the letter, we asked for members of the church to sign the church’s statement of faith and the church covenant.
We informed them that if they were not regularly attending, and if they failed to sign and return the statement and covenant, it would be recommended to the congregation that their names be removed.
Our letters produced all sorts of replies. Some people were happily active in other churches; some were going nowhere. We learned that ten of our members were deceased. One member had become a Unitarian and was upset at being contacted at all.
Why did we do this?
1. For the sake of the absentees. If they were members elsewhere, and it had never been conveyed to us, then we were simply making our records accurate. If they were going nowhere, or to some non-evangelical church, then they needed to be reminded of the gospel that they once affirmed and the commitments they once held. One dear lady who had not come for 20 years (though living nearby) told me her struggles. After being assured of her welcome, she has once again joined us on Sundays.
2. For the sake of those coming regularly to church. They need to be reminded of the seriousness with which Christ takes the church, and the importance, therefore, of their participation. The New Testament warns Christians not to forsake the assembling of themselves (Heb. 10:24-25). Paul wrote his letters assuming that Christians would be present and active in their local churches, using images of the church as a building and a family.
Perhaps his most famous image is the church as a body, the body of Christ. And where did Paul get this marvelous idea? I think he got it on the road to Damascus. In Acts 9, when he was struck down by the appearance of the Risen Christ, Jesus didn’t say to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you going to persecute Christians?” but “Why are you persecuting Me?” It was Jesus Christ who taught Paul that the church in Damascus was his body.
3. For the health of the church corporately. It is not good for a congregation to have half its members AWOL. It is deceptive and dangerous. Unchecked absenteeism communicates the wrong thing about what it means to be a member of the body.
Paul cries out (1 Cor. 5) that Christ our Passover Lamb has been slain, and that all that is needed to complete the feast is for us to be the unleavened loaf; the loaf uncompromised by tolerating unrepentant sin. It is not the adulterous man that Paul rebukes here; it is the church that tolerates his sin, coddles his self-deception, and allows the name of Christ thereby to be blasphemed.
I was concerned that we were lying about God. How could we send people out to share the Good News of forgiveness and new life only to have other “members” undoing our witness?
Is member A telling them about new life in Christ while member B is known not to go to church, to be greedy or corrupt or immoral, and all the while in good standing in the church?
Church discipline properly practiced is one of the most powerful evangelistic tools God has given us. It aids in highlighting the nature of true conversion, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the urgency of the issues involved. It helps reveal the church as the powerful witness Jesus meant her to be when he told his disciples in John 13 that the world would know that they were his disciples by the love they had for one another.
4. For the sake of God’s glory. We should not lie about God or misrepresent him with our lives. We may take his name in vain with our words, or with our lives when we claim to be his but live as if we aren’t.
Before this congregation called me as pastor, I stood before them and answered questions. One question was about certain kinds of evangelism that I thought tended to produce false conversions. I told the congregation if I came here as their pastor, I ultimately wouldn’t be working for them, but for God. At the end of time I will stand before God to give account of my ministry.
At that great day, I said, I have no intention of standing before him, holding the hands of 300 people I’ve never seen in church, yet the record indicating that the church I was responsible for listed them among the faithful. I told them that any kind of evangelism that tends to produce people who take their salvation for granted while they’re uninvolved in the life of the congregation is hurtful to the spread of the gospel, and potentially dangerous for them and the congregation.
Of course, this discussion should raise questions about many things, not least of which is how we assure people of their salvation with only the slightest evidence.
It should also cause many of us to re-examine our way of taking in new members. Do we make sure that they know the gospel? Do we take time to hear their own testimonies and to watch their lives? All of this our congregation is doing now. And because of that, we trust we will never have to discipline half our members again.
For more information on congregations trying to take the radical nature of conversion seriously, visit www.churchreform.org. How have you dealt with inactive members?
Mark E. Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C. DMEDever@cs.com
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