A healthy church member is a committed church member (What is a healthy church member? Part 7)

I was taken aback by his critique of our church’s leadership: “Church leadership expects us to come to church too much.” This fellow church member confided in me that they were considering leaving our body for another church, one that had services only once a week. “I don’t see anything in Scripture that says we have to go to church three or four times a week,” he said. “To be expected to attend church regularly is legalism.” While I made it clear that I agreed that Scripture does not prescribe that a certain number of church services per week equals maximum holiness, his attitude toward the church as a gathered body, a family in union with Christ, disturbed me. While I don’t claim to know his heart, this man (this was in a church in which my family was involved more than a decade ago) was essentially telling me, “The church is not a priority for my family and it should not be for others.”

A Christian should join a local congregation because the Bible clearly teaches that such membership is expected. I provide a case for biblical church membership in a previous blog post here: http://www.pbchurch.org/resources/pbc-blog/sixth-mark-of-a-healthy-church-a-biblical-understanding-of-membership

So what is expected of a healthy church member?

Is church involvement really demanded biblically and is it necessary to grow as a follower of Christ? From Thabiti Anyabwile’s excellent book What is a Healthy Church Member? (Crossway) from which this series derives, here is how a healthy church member lives:

• Attends regularly. As Thabiti points out, being present, being known, and being active are the only ways to make Christian love possible (Heb. 10:24-25). I have been in church for my entire life and I must say that I have never seen a mature Christian who was not also a faithful attendee of the church’s regular meetings.

• Seeks peace. “A committed church member is committed to the maintenance of peace in the congregation,” Thabiti writes. “Let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). James 3:18: “And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

• Edifies others. A committed church member is not merely a consumer—one who sits and asks “What will I/can I get out of this church?” A healthy church member is one who, like our Lord Jesus Christ, comes not to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45).

• Warns and admonishes others. A healthy church member speaks the truth to others in love, helping them when they see fellow members beginning to drift toward sin or away from sound doctrine. But a healthy church member carries this out with humility and joy, always with the aim of building up that other person in Christ. A healthy member is not a busybody or a gossip or a meddler in the affairs of others.

• Pursues reconciliation. As followers of Christ, we have been given “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18-21). “Thus, we must repair breaches of fellowship as quickly as possible, even before continuing in public worship” (Matt. 5:23-24), writes Thabiti.

• Bears with others. We must be patient and longsuffering with the foibles and weaknesses of one another in the body of Christ, knowing that we ourselves are sinners who have received profound grace. We must be characterized, Thabiti rightly argues, by the meekness of Christ so that we do not think more highly of ourselves than we ought (Matt. 5:5). We “must hold up under the weight of disappointments, loss, attack, slander, and offense (Matt. 18:21-22; Rom. 15:1). After all, “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things” and “covers a multitude of sins.”

• Prepares for the ordinances. We must prepare our hearts before taking the Lord’s Supper. A committed member rejoices in the baptism of new believes and examines his heart in preparation for joining the family of God at the table of communion.

• Supports the work of ministry. A healthy church member gives of his resources of money, time and gifts to further the Gospel in the local church.

Church membership is neither a burden nor an entitlement; it is a privilege. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who held many church meetings in private amid an atheistic regime in Nazi Germany, provides a penetrating admonition that reminds us of this great truth:

It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went ‘with the multitude . . . to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday (Ps. 42:4) . . . . Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living in common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.” (From Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together as quoted in What is a Healthy Church Member, p. 71)