I was a few months into my pastorate when a woman in a large SUV rolled down her window to catch me in the church’s parking lot. “Good morning, Pastor!”
I said hello and introduced myself; she did the same and added, “I have been a church member for over 20 years, and it was really good to be here this morning!”
This was our first encounter, so I inquired, “Why haven’t we met yet?” The lady then said she hadn’t attended church in years.
At the time, the church was small enough that I knew every member by name. On my way home that morning, her words echoed in my mind: “I have been a member for over 20 years” followed by “I haven’t attended church in years.” I turned this contradiction over repeatedly. The ecclesial math didn’t add up.
Over the next few months, as our congregation grew, I began posing one question during membership classes: “If someone were to ask you what expectations come with church membership, what would you say?” Most of the time, responses were vague and uncertain. Very few could articulate what church membership was or why it was important. I’ve seen this pattern repeated over two decades of pastoral ministry, cementing my conviction that a biblical understanding of church membership is one of the most countercultural ideas in modern culture.
This confusion about church membership isn’t just a mix-up—it points to a deeper challenge pastors are facing today. Indeed, some pastors have led their churches into not practicing membership at all. I believe many pastors are hesitant to transition toward meaningful membership because of society’s heightened skepticism toward institutions and institutional leaders. After all, we’ve all seen the headlines involving pastors who have abused the influence of their positions—and in some cases, spiritually abused people—under the guise of “membership requirements.”
However, the answer isn’t abandoning the practice of meaningful membership, nor is it settling for a meaningless or token membership. Instead, we need a healthy vision for church membership that emphasizes biblical leadership and ecclesiology, mutual accountability—all focusing on the spiritual vitality of the local church and its witness.
Social science research informs us that in the modern age, churches have moved toward a looser or more accommodating posture toward church membership. This shift has resulted in weak commitments and, thus, adapting to societal trends.
In our upcoming book Every Member Matters, Josh Wredberg and I point out that the very idea of membership has taken its cues from institutions like big-box retail stores and local gyms more than it has the local church. These consumer-style memberships affect only a small slice of life and ask for nothing more than a small financial commitment and occasional attendance. In fact, when it comes to the local gym, the best members are those who join and never show up—leaving less wear and tear on the machines while still paying fees. Church membership is completely different. It requires participation, not just affiliation.
To make matters even more convoluted, several other cultural developments have driven a wedge between biblical church membership and people who profess to be Christians. Take, for example, the rise of expressive individualism. Today, people are encouraged to define and design themselves apart from the community around them. In earlier generations, the autonomous individual did not exist. People would come to know themselves by being known within of a defined community.
Occasionally, incoming church members have asked me if we use spiritual gifts inventory tests to help them discover how they might best serve the church. These types of tools could be helpful to a degree; however, it’s pretty easy to get the gifts you want by simply answering the questions a certain way. When this topic arises, I respond by saying, “The better way to identify your spiritual gifts is to involve yourself in the life of the church. This way, other members of the body will help you identify and encourage you in the gifts God has given you.” Some have difficulty with this approach because it works against the grain of individualism and the ability to define one’s own destiny. Yet this is precisely how God has designed the body to function—coming to know yourself better by being known in community.
Even more, earlier Christians would come to know themselves in being known by God in Christ. As Brian Rosner argues in How to Find Yourself, conformity to Christ is how Christians find themselves—by losing themselves in the divine drama of redemption. Finding your identity is not a self-fulfillment experience; there is a God-provided path. Scripture provides the script. The Holy Spirit animates our actions. The church is where we find encouragement and accountability to reflect our identity in Christ and reflect God’s image to those around us. Again, church membership requires participation. How else can a Christian faithfully live out the over 40 “one-another” commands that necessitate the context of an intimate community to be practiced?
We are now five years removed from the COVID-19 crisis. At the risk of provoking pastoral PTSD, a few comments deserve mention here. Some claim COVID prompted changes in people’s engagement with church life. However, I believe COVID only thrust us further down the path we were already headed. How many churches have “members” who are still hesitant to gather with the saints in person? How many of these missing saints excuse themselves from physical gatherings because they watch the service online? This type of digital disengagement—and it is disengagement, not engagement—makes it harder for pastors to shepherd well and, over time, erodes both relational connection and pastoral authority.
In my church, the elders regularly check in on members and help maintain accurate membership rolls. A few times, we have presented certain members to the congregation as “missing” and have even removed them from our rolls after absences exceeding a year. In some cases, we later learned these now-former members still watch the service online, as if that constitutes their participation in the life of the church.
I say all of this understanding that there are some cases where physical attendance is not recommended for medical reasons. But when there is no reasonable reason for avoiding the physical gathering, these absent members have effectively dislocated themselves from the body of the church.
Looking back over the past century, we can see how modern technologies have led many to replace involvement in the community with information consumption. When radio and television first appeared, not every household had one. In fact, it was common to find neighbors gathering in one house to hear a presidential address or watch the big game. Now, look around in a public space and you’ll find groups of people together but alone. They listen to their own music or have their faces glued to their devices, watching videos and reels. Technology has even hijacked certain relational words from our vocabulary. What do people actually mean when they say, “We are friends on Facebook”?
These technological developments are wonderful in many ways! I am not a curmudgeon eager to return to the frontier era; I am calling us to carefully consider how cultural conventions are shaping people’s understanding of church community. This phenomenon is called “social dislocation,” “decreasing social cohesion,” even “communal disengagemet.” Imagine a cathedral full of parishioners, each with headphones, listening to personally curated worship playlists and a preferred preacher. Would we call that a church gathering? (My concern in even presenting this example is that someone might think that might actually work!) Yet this self-directed and isolated approach to spiritual formation is foreign to the scriptural portrait of the church, one where pastors and elders are called to oversee souls and equip the saints for the work of the ministry, where the church family is to practice the “one another” commands as a relational community, and where the saints sing to God and to one another—together.
We all have our spiritual blind spots. We all have needs we cannot meet alone. We are not great at accountability without support. These challenges are rarely resolved in isolation from a church family. The technological isolation COVID fostered didn’t emerge from nowhere—it accelerated a trend of social disconnection that scholars have been tracing for decades. Over 20 years ago, Robert Putnam named it in his landmark book Bowling Alone: “Faith communities in which people worship together are arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America.”
The exhortation of Hebrews 10:25 to gather regularly cannot be fulfilled by watching a church service on Facebook at home in your pajamas. The encouragements of Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 to sing together are only accomplished by participating in a local church. Cultivating a private playlist of worship music is completely different. And while it’s easy with modern technology to pipe in any preacher or teacher, they cannot shepherd you, care for you, or guard your doctrine (Heb. 13:17).
While social scientists like Putnam identify the problem, Scripture provides both the diagnosis and the solution. Meaningful membership is so vital to the lives of Christians and regularly participating in a local church is a biblical command.
When the letters of the New Testament were written, there was a clear understanding of who was “in” the church and who was not. For example, when Paul wrote to believers in various cities, he was writing to the local Christians in that area. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebukes the Corinthians for allowing an unrepentant sinner into fellowship. He commands them to remove the man from the body and not to associate with the man. How could he do this without the church clearly understanding who was a committed, accountable member and who was not?
Someone may argue that in the early church, membership wasn’t as formal as it is today. To that, I would respond that we have to formalize today what was simply understood back then. Before the advent of expressive individualism, people were much more tethered to their communities. The local church wasn’t a consumeristic choice based on music style or programs but a community necessary for flourishing in the faith. It wasn’t chosen because it was pleasing but because it was people a Christian would join and participate with.
This helps us understand why the idea of church discipline (as described in 1 Corinthians 5) is so foreign to Christians today. The expressive individual would say, “You have no place to tell me how to live my life.” The consumerist would say, “I don’t like how accountability feels, so I am going to find another place to meet my needs.” People may even think, “It would be much easier if I simply worshiped with Christian music at home and listened to a sermon podcast. Then I wouldn’t have to be bothered with others. I can live my life the way I want.”
The Bible’s commands for community aren’t random rules; they reflect how we were fundamentally made as image-bearers of God. If we read along the grain of Scripture, we see a repeated refrain: “It is not good for man to live alone” (Gen. 2:18). Human beings were made for community and commitment as beings formed in the image of the triune God. This analogy of relation calls us to remember that our triune God lives in intra-trinitarian relationship. Being made in his image, we are created for intra-human relationships, not intended to live in isolation.
In the Fall of Genesis 3, one of the implications of sin is the disruption of community—both between God and humanity and between humans. Yet when God called Abram to form a new community, he promised to be their God and declared they would be his people. From this call, God promised Abraham a people, and from those people a “seed”—which finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus.
In Christ, we are brought into the family of God and thus into a relationship with one another. This family finds its tangible expression in the local church. The church community is called to loving commitment to one another, which characterizes and distinguishes Jesus’ followers from other social groups. The church is committed to the apostles’ teaching and to communal love for one another (Acts 2:42–45). This type of commitment and community began supernaturally at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit. This type of commitment and community, which has been hindered by human sin and weakness, is only fulfilled in the power of the Spirit and through the regulation of God’s Word. The church’s beauty lies in seeing different types of people unified under Christ (Gal. 3:28). The church is God’s people, Christ’s body, and the Spirit’s temple.
Church leaders, I urge you to strengthen your church in the biblical call to faithful, participatory membership. Develop a membership process if you do not already have one. In that process, define membership and its expectations, perhaps through a church covenant. Ensure that the pastors and elders, along with the help of the congregation, reach out to missing members and check in on those who are hurting. Maintain accurate membership records and urge those who are missing to return. Practice loving church discipline in the prayerful hope that wandering sinners will repent and return as renewed saints. Schedule regular membership meetings, where the church family can gather and be reminded of their covenant commitments to one another as well as take opportunities to shepherd the body through difficult situations with transparency and celebrate God’s work through the church.
Renew focus on small groups as the primary setting where relationships are established and church members care for one another. Plan regular fellowship events, service projects, and meals where the church can gather and serve together, deepening their relational bonds. In other words, to develop the church as a countercultural community, establish practices and patterns aimed directly at that goal. When our culture says, “Live your life however you want,” we must demonstrate that no Christian is an island. They are part of a body—the body of Christ. And an amputated body part dies.
Pastors, do what you must to rebuild trust and foster a healthy biblical community in a time when people are skeptical of institutions and pastoral authority. Remember, the church’s faithfulness directly affects our witness to the world. The church’s reputation reflects God’s reputation among the lost who don’t yet know him. The world needs to see the church as a countercultural community, offering the Way to those weary in searching (John 14:6). Indeed, the church is the only community that exists into eternity. We must steward it well.
Matthew Z. Capps has served as the lead pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina, since 2015. Matt holds an MDiv from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a DMin in pastoral theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and is a PhD candidate at Ridley College (Melbourne). Matt is also the author, editor, and contributor of several books, including Every Member Matters (B&H, September 2025).
