Membership Gatherings

Nicole and I are LOVING the gatherings in our home. We are systematically and alphabetically inviting every NEHBC member over for coffee and cupcakes in groups of 20-40. It is so much fun. Because we are doing it alphabetically, the tenure of the members ranges from one week to nine years and the age of the members ranges from young adults to senior adults. This makes the gatherings rich and biblical. We are loving the interaction we are getting with everyone and we find ourselves looking forward to the next gathering as soon as one ends. If you haven't had your gathering yet, we can't wait to see you.

Church Life Series Update

I'm continuing the Church Life series in midweek worship. We are studying the critical components of the local church that when done biblically, create an environment inside of which the Lord does His glorious work of life change in us. Things like church membership, church discipline, biblical preaching, the correct gospel, biblical organizational structure, and the like. These are the factors that should matter to the Christ follower when finding a church, when evaluating their own church, or when planting a new church. These are the reproduceable factors anywhere in the world, in any ministry context. These are the marks of a healthy church.

I'm delivering this series with a style very different than our congregation is used to seeing from me. I'm reading from a manuscript instead of memorizing it and delivering it without notes. I'm doing this on purpose. First, I want to teach and not preach these biblical principles and this style is forcing me to do that. Second, I want to be very precise in what I say about a lot of detailed information because the audios of this series will be used a lot in the future at NEHBC. When the series started, I was very nervous about using this format. I was certain that by week three, nobody would be coming. Who wants to go hear Nathan read a paper on a week night about issues that not many people are talking about? But interestingly, attendance has gone up. I'm getting lots of positive feedback. As one man told me, "I wish someone had taught me this stuff 30 years ago, I'm seeing things completely differently now."

While I still think the delivery is awkward and I am uncomfortable doing it this way, to be sure, the spirit in the room during the teaching time and the genuine, biblical fellowship taking place after the worship service is telling me that the Lord is in this. I never ceased to be amazed that when you talk about the things the Lord wants to talk about, it will rarely draw a crowd, but those that come will be given by the Holy Spirit the eyes to see and they will see.

Glory to God.

NEHBC membership application process

This week, I was reminded again of the importance of a healthy church membership process. At NEHBC, once one requests membership, one must attend NEHBC regularly for 3 months, write out their statement of faith (story of salvation and baptism experience), attend our Discovery Class (ins and outs of NEHBC) and then if one still wants to join they are voted on.

This week, a gentleman's statement of faith caught the eye of the NEHBC pastor reviewing his story. This led to an in person meeting during which it came to light that though the man was baptized, it was in a Jehovah's Witness church. Cults like the JWs are so good at deceiving people into thinking that they are a New Testament church. As a result, discipleship of this man has begun so that he can begin practicing biblical christianity. We love him and are so grateful to God he has come to NEHBC. We look forward to the day he can become a member.

Score another victory for our membership process. I wonder how many Southern Baptist churches have members baptized by cults because the SB church does not have a prospective member vetting process? The road to a healthy church begins by guarding the front door. Glory to God.

The NEHBC Membership Process

Our process is designed to help confirm (or not) a prospective member's feeling that the Lord is calling them to formally affiliate with NEHBC:

Step 1: The individual fills out the white card in the worship service requesting membership. Some folks like to walk down the aisle during the invitation to hand me their request for membership, the vast majority simply drop it into the green offering bag during the service. Either way is acceptable.

Step 2: We ask that the person "regularly" (which we define as two or more Sundays/month) attend NEHBC for at least roughly 90 days before joining so that they have a fairly good idea of what we are like.

Step 3: That week, the individual is mailed our Statement of Faith (SOF). A church member must be someone who has given their life to Christ and been baptized by immersion in a church of like faith and practice. The SOF is simply a double sided, 8.5 x 11 form that explains our membership process and asks the prospective member to briefly describe their salvation experience and their baptism experience if they have had one. They can return the completed SOF by dropping it in the green offering bag, mailing it in, or handing it to a staff member.

We review the SOF to see if the person's understanding of salvation is the bible's explanation of salvation. This is the measure we take to try and ensure we have a membership made up of born again believers. I can't tell you what a joy it is to read the diverse testimonies we get--the Lord Jesus really does chase us down and win us to Himself. On rare occasions we get folks who are deeply offended that they are asked to tell us about their salvation and baptism experiences in order to become members--we are not offended by their reluctance to profess faith in Christ as a basis for membership--it just means our membership process worked because it showed them they won't be comfortable at NEHBC. On occasion, this step in the process enables us to lead people to Christ. We will get testimonies describing salvation as something we earn or accomplish and in those instances we meet with the people in person and share the Gospel message with them. Those are sweet moments. The baptism portion is like it.

Step 4: We ask the prospective members to attend a one time, 90 minute class called the Discovery Class. In this setting we provide a brief history of our church, explain our church structure, our vision, our membership expectations, our ministries, etc, and of course there is lots of Q n A.

Once this process is completed, our trustees, with great joy and celebration, vote them into NEHBC membership and the new members are mailed a letter welcoming them to the NEHBC family.

Making Membership Matter

If you have not read my post entitled "Why Church Membership Matters", I'd encourage you to go read it first, as this post is a continuation of my thoughts in that post.

In the Southern Baptist Convention, our churches claim 16,000,000 on our membership roles, but we only know where less than half those people are. That is not membership, that is collecting names. Completely meaningless. At NEHBC, we want membership to be meaningfully New Testament. Membership ought to mean the things I listed in the previous post. At NEHBC we try to accomplish this goal through several measures.

1. We try to teach about the biblical meaning of membership during the Discovery Class, a prerequisite for prospective church members.

2. We have membership expectations that we discuss during the same Discovery Class and that we refer to as the three Ts: time, talent, and tithe. We ask our members to give of their time to regularly attending a worship service and bible study class, find at least one place of service in the church, and give their tithe to support the Lord's vision for our church family.

3. Annually, our church staff sits down with the membership roll and we talk through it family unit by family unit. Do we know where each unit is? When is the last time we saw them or heard from them? Where are they serving? If a name comes up and we all have blank stares on our faces, the family unit's name goes onto a list. Once we have the total list of people that we are out of touch with, we make personal phone calls to those families. It is our goal to talk to them live on the phone. We want to see if they are ok, if we have just been missing them in the crowd, if they have moved away, if they are in need of ministry or prayer. If it turns out they have drifted from the Lord and stopped coming to worship, we urge them to come back and live their lives in community with us. This process creates a wide range of ministry opportunities: from counseling situations, to prayer opportunities, to bible teaching moments, to helping spiritually drifting folks come back to the Lord. And yes, we encounter family units each year who wont or can't come back because they have moved away or have been hurt or have lost interest in the Lord. And sometimes, despite our best efforts to win them back, they don't want to be members of NEHBC any longer. It is always our desire that our phone calls result in finding out we either just keep missing them in the sea of faces when they come to worship or that if they have stopped coming, that they return to our fellowship.

By the way, these phone calls are taking place this week.

4. We periodically contact our pending members to encourage them to complete our membership process. I will discuss this process in a subsequent post, but at least annually, and sometimes biannually, we will email or call the pending members to offer them a friendly reminder of what they have left in order to finish the membership process. We want to do whatever we can to help them get the process completed, whether it's just offering a word of encouragement, answering questions, or reexplaining the process.

Often times we find that some pending members have not completed the process because they thought they became members by simply requesting membership on the white card in one of the worship services. Our periodic follow ups with the pending members enable us to find these folks and help them understand that the white card membership request just initiated our membership process.

These phone calls are also taking place this week.

5. We also go through our list of prospects that is VERY long. These are all the people who have ever come to NEHBC and filled out the white guest card. On this list, we annually find some folks who clearly have found their church home at NEHBC and yet have never taken the first step to becoming members. We make a list of these folks and call them with a very friendly encouragement that they begin the process to formally affiliate with us for all the reasons listed in my previous post.

These phone calls are also taking place this week.

I believe that if we are going to be transformed from a gathering of individuals into a living community of God, membership must become meaningful and must matter to our church family.

Why Church Membership Matters

This week, we have church membership ministries going on and so I thought I'd take the time to do a little teaching about the subject. I'll explain some different aspects of church membership in a short series of posts.

First, why does church membership matter? Why can't I just attend my local church and never formally affiliate with her?

There are a variety of biblical ways in which we know that membership in a local church matters to God:

A. The vast majority of the New Testament books are written to local churches expressing God's passion, love, and plans for the local church. These epistles refer to the church as the bride of Christ. If the church is Christ's bride and I don't love and deeply value the church, how can I love Christ? If you are cold and indifferent to Nicole, ignoring her at every turn and then try to convince me you love me and support me, I will have little goodwill toward you. You may say, but Nathan, I do love the church, the UNIVERSAL church, I'm only indifferent to the local church. Can I suggest to you that such a position is a little shortsighted. A church, by definition, is the physical assembling of a body of people. Where and when does the universal church currently assemble? I believe the universal church currently only exists in conceptual form--it is a future reality. The only current biblical church that exists is the local church. One day when Jesus returns, the universal church will transition from conceptual form into reality and at the same time the local church will cease to exist. Right now, the future members of the universal church are organized by God into smaller hubs--the local church.

B. The New Testament (NT) epistles assume that Christ followers are living their lives in the context of a local community of believers. The concept of walking with Christ in a vacuum, void of other believers is foreign to NT teaching. In the 1st Century, when believers lived in proximity to other believers, those believers came together in a covenanted relationship--formally affiliated together to do the work of the Lord. Christ followers banded together in churches because it's inside the incubator of a local church that life change through bible teaching takes place.

C. Hebrews 10:24-25: And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. The NT teaches us that our ability to be what we are called by God to be--loving, and our ability to do what God has called us to do--His work, necessitates that we physically assemble together regularly.

D. 1 Cor. 12:7: To each one is given the manifestation [a spiritual gift] of the Spirit for the common good. When God calls you to join a local church, it is not just for your benefit, it is also for the benefit of the local church. You AND your spiritual gift are joining that local church--a gift the Lord has given you for the "common good"--the people that make up that local church. Part of the Lord's provision for the local church is to systematically provide the balance of gifts each church needs to fulfill their God given vision. Membership informs the local church that you are bringing your gift to the table and that your gift can be counted on for the church's ministry of making disciples. How can your church know if you are called by God to them and that in turn they can count on your giftedness unless you join the church?

E. The bible calls the local church pastor a shepherd; in fact, the term "pastor" is the word "shepherd" in Greek. The bible calls God's people sheep. The connection is obvious--how can a pastor know you are one of his sheep, and counting on him and that flock, unless you join? He can't. Membership informs the flock and the pastor that there is a new addition in the flock.

F. 1 Cor. 5 is a case study of church discipline and is in particular an extreme case--a young man was having an affair with his step mom...whoa!!! The church's responsibility in the matter is laid out in the chapter--the church was supposed to hold that young man accountable for his indifference toward God's values--and despite that church's effort to win him away from his sin, he bragged ("gloried") about it. In turn, the church was instructed to remove him from the membership. Question: how can one be removed from something to which they never originally belonged? Part of church membership means receiving loving accountability from the local church. By belonging to a local church, I'm trusting them that if it becomes massively obvious that there is a pattern in my life indicating I'm straying from Christ, that somebody will say something to me and do something to meet me where I'm at and walk me back to Christ. Don't let me get far from Him or I will suffer greatly!

If you are called by God to belong to the local community of believers called Northeast Houston Baptist Church and you have not yet begun our membership process, I want to urge you to do so in order to follow God's will for your life. If you have begun our membership process, but have not yet completed it, let me urge you to get it done.

A question comes to mind: for membership to mean all of these things above, doesn't that necessitate the local church keeps track of and in touch with her members? How can a shepherd and a flock know who is counting on them for ministry if the sheep roster (membership roll) is so outdated that there are people on there that haven't been heard of in years? How can there be loving accountability if nobody knows where half of a church's members are? I know of church's with deceased people on their membership role! For these reasons and others, most churches' membership rolls are meaningless and not biblical membership at all. At NEHBC, we want membership to be meaningfully New Testament. I'll address this issue in the next blog post.