Church Membership: Beyond the Roll Call

Music. Welcome back to the Life on 11 podcast, where we turn the volume up on kingdom living and faith, not halfway, but all the way.

Today, we are diving into one of the most misunderstood questions in all of Christianity, church membership. Is it about having your name on a roll in the church, or is it something deeper? We'll look at what scripture says, why belonging to a church matters, and how membership can shape your faith and community.

So whether you're already a member of a church and you're just attending, or you're wondering if it really actually makes a difference, This conversation is for you, so let's turn it up and talk about life and the body of Christ. What's going on, dawg? What's happening, my man? How we doing tonight? I'm doing really good tonight. I have been loving the weather recently. Dude, it's been amazing. It has been fabulous. It has been.

Shandor Valley weather has been rocking. It's not typical for the end of August because usually it's blazing hot. But, I mean, the past, I'm going to say the past week, I've had to put my sweatshirt on in the mornings. Oh, yeah. And I love it. Oh, yeah. I drove to your house the other night in the Mustang. And you got cold? Did you get cold? I was a little cold in my way home. Oh, baby. A little cold in my way home. So, I just haven't acclimated to the nighttime.

Haven't acclimated. That's right. That's right. But this is, it's getting to be that time of year. Oh, man. It's so great. Hey, you know what? What? Football. Yes. Football. we are like two nights away from the first NFL game yep this is this is the no more Sundays without NFL football, until February. Yes. I like it. And college. College is in full swing. A lot of upsets over the weekend. I mean, were they really upsets week one? I mean, you're just going off with the talking heads to think.

Well, I don't want to tell you this, but you're on a podcast, so that makes you, in fact, a talking head. I mean, that's debatable. I'm a rambling head. Shout out. Shout out. Anyway, it's been good. It's been good hey we had i hope you had a great memorial day weekend memorial day i mean labor day.

We're at the end of summer labor day i did i did have a great great weekend did you labor, my i did a little bit of laboring but i also did a little bit of napping as well i got some napping on sunday afternoon and on monday afternoon like double nappage double nappage oh yeah it was great that's fantastic yeah it was that's good that's good i'm glad I'm glad for you. Yep. I'm glad for you. Got to spend some time with some homies over the weekend, so that was good too. Yep.

Yep. It's always good to get around the people that you love on weekends like that. Yep. It's very good. How about you? It was good. We, yeah, we, like you, spent some time with some of our friends and got to do some fun stuff. Church was great on Sunday. At least I thought so. I thought it was good. It was a good service. And we went to King's Dominion yesterday. Whoop, whoop. Spent the day there with all the fam and the girls,

the boys' girlfriends. Whoa. Yep. How many more Kings Dominion adventures you reckon you have left this year? I'm going to put the over under at probably three. Oh, okay. All right. I think I'm going to take the under on that. I'm going to take the under? Yeah. Yeah. You don't think so? No. No. I don't think so. I know we have to go at least one more time before October. Okay. Because Haley has some birthday gifts that she wants from Kings Dominion.

Oh. So we've got to go pick those up before her birthday. Okay. And we want to go at least once for the haunt. We might... Get a sitter for the younger ones and just take the teens and their girlfriends and Jess and I and go do the haunt and get the, get the holiness scared out of us for a couple of days. Gotcha. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Word. I like it, but it's good. Good stuff. It's good. So yeah, we're rolling, dude. Hey, the layer, dude, this, this is looking good.

It's like, it's like 98, 99%. Yeah. A little finishing touches. We got some little stuff to go. But we'll have to put pictures up when it's done. I mean, it won't be as good because people haven't seen the before and the after. True. But it's there, man. Yeah, it's a whole different place. It's going to be ready for football on Sunday. Sunday. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. Some Jaden Daniels touchdowns. Boop, boop. Ready for it. Bring it. It's going to be great. All right, anyway,

sorry. I interrupted you. No, no, you're getting ready to say something.

So speaking of a good church on Sunday, today we're talking about church membership. Church membership. Church membership. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Is it good? Is it bad? Yeah. What is it? You know, this actually comes from one of our loyal listeners, somebody who's a regular listener on the podcast. I didn't get their permission to share their name, so I won't do that. I'm sure they probably don't care. Yeah, but you know, without the permission thing and lawsuits.

And you know, with our huge popularity. Exactly. People are going to try to get in on our money. Exactly. Because we have a lot of it. They know that they know how much money we're making out this podcast and they're going to try to get some of it. We don't even have a bank account. That is true. That's true. So I ain't saying the gold digger, but yeah. So anyway, so we're talking about church membership at the request of one of our listeners, which is always cool.

So just so you know, if you ever have an idea of a podcast, something you want us to tackle and talk about, all you got to do is let us know. We're happy to do it. We've done a few, I think now with some thoughts from some listeners. So always, always put those in. So full disclaimer, right? You and I are both members of the church. Correct. You know, as pastor's kids, are you a pastor's kid and me a pastor? That probably skews some of our thoughts, maybe a little bit.

Yeah, I'm going to say definitely.

When we get into it, I'll... Yeah. So let's talk about what is a church member to you? What's a church member? Someone who is... Active in their church. They are a regular attendee. They are involved in the different ministries, whatever they may be. Obviously, there's different options at whatever church you're at, but you're involved in the life of the church.

Now, there is a membership role at churches that is usually much bigger or longer than members that are actually engaged and active in the life of the church. So I want to differentiate between that. So we're not talking about just being on the roll where you get the letter every year for homecoming or whatever like that. We're talking about membership and being active and being engaged. Yes.

Big difference. And yeah, huge difference. So for me, you know, I became a member of my home church growing up when I was probably, I'm going to say 13-ish, 14, maybe. In the Mennonite church, we talked about the age of accountability. And, you know, that's when I decided to give my life to Christ. And I went through a membership, like, preparation class. Then I was baptized and became a member. And so there was some excitement about that. Yeah, I would agree.

Church membership, to me, is very different than being on a roll. There are people that would show up on the roll who I don't think are members, and there are people who wouldn't show up on the roll who I think are. One of the things, so two funny, just anecdotal stories. The first would be, I got a call from somebody. This has been five years ago, pre-COVID, BC, before COVID. And the person says that they want to be removed from the role at Mount Zion. Okay. And I'm like, all right.

And I asked them, like, who is you?

And they told me who they were. And in the conversation, they were upset that at the time, we were members of the Church of the Brethren and as we know the Church of the Brethren had some very liberal leaning things happening and they did not want to be associated with some things that were happening at Bridgewater College that happened to be Bridgewater College is a Church of the Brethren school they did not want their name to be associated with it in talking with

them they had not been at Mounds Lion since 1983, oh my that was before I was born wow and so for whatever reason. I mean, they were attending another church. They were like, I'll go here and this is where I'm at. So it had literally been almost 40 years. That's wild. And they had no need to change their membership. And then when they did, it actually had nothing to do with our church. It had to do with the church of the brethren. So that's anecdotal story number one.

Anecdotal story number two comes to us from Easter Sunday, two years ago. Andrew, the associate pastor of our church and I were outside frying bacon for our church sunrise service. These two ladies come up. The two ladies come up and they make their way into the cemetery. We're like, hey, how you doing? On the way out, they're like, hey, ladies, we're frying some bacon, get ready to have church sunrise service, have big Easter celebration.

Why don't you stay and worship with us today? And the woman's like, oh, well, this is actually my church. I go to church here. And I'm looking at her like, I ain't never seen you before in my life. And we said, oh, you go to church here? She said, well, this is my church. This is where my membership is. I don't go to church, but I'm a member of this church. And I was like, I, and she was like, who's the pastor here now?

And I was like, that's me, you know? And she was like, oh, well, you know, it's good to meet you. You know, how long have you been pastor here? And I was like, ah, 13 years, you know, like, Hey, like, and so those are the difference between being on a role for sure. Yep. And being a member. And I think both of us would, and this is, I guess, from being a minister, I find that being on the role is somehow related to legal process.

Oh, okay. Right. I feel like we made church rolls so that we know who gets to vote in business meetings, who gets to make the decisions of the church. Oh, interesting. Okay. I can't prove that, right? I can't prove it, but I've watched enough church business and been in enough church conflicts now to know that 90% of the time that we break the church rollout when it's time to make parliamentary procedural decisions. Yeah, that you're right. I could see. I see your point. I see your point.

And there's all sorts of times where I have been in meetings, not at our church, praise God, where people who haven't been to church somewhere in 10, 15 years have shown up for a vote because they're role members and they get to vote because the church is voting a new pastor. They're trying to vote a pastor out or they're buying a piece of property or they're doing whatever. And they show up for the vote and they get to vote because they're on the roll.

That's very interesting. Yeah. What about, sorry, since we're talking about the role, are you aware of churches having a process where they purge the role every so often? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it happens. We've purged the role once since I was at Mount Don. Okay, I just didn't know if that was a thing. That was just a me not knowing question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know how many churches regularly do it. Yeah. I mean,

you're supposed to. It's in our constitution. Oh, okay. Okay. We're supposed to. Interesting. And the other thing that strikes me about those things is the amount of people who put a lot of stock... In being a member of a church. Now for us, I'm assuming, I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, Mennonites are like brethren. We attach church membership to baptism. Correct. So you become a member of our church when you are baptized. Yes. You can also become a member by affirmation of faith. Yes.

But it's like this automatic qualifier. Correct. Not a lot, I shouldn't say, there are denominations where that doesn't happen. You can be baptized and not. But it is assumed in the Brethren and the Mennonites and a few others that when you are baptized, you are becoming a member of that church. And so we link those two things together. So if you are, if you're unfamiliar with that practice, that also jades a little bit of what we're talking about. Sure.

Because that's one reason why I'm not the kind of guy that goes around baptizing people, because I believe that when I baptize someone, they are a member of the body of Christ where i'm connected to sure and if that's not then we have to have a very specific conversation i'm not saying i wouldn't do it but i have to have a very specific conversation i have baptized people who do not attend mount zine they go somewhere else and they just and i've had to say like i want you to understand

that normally when i do this i'm baptizing you into the body of mount zine and i'm not doing that today and i need you to know that that and they didn't know that that that you're I assume you have an expectation or a hope that they are. Oh, I won't. For the most part, I wouldn't say I won't. I have yet to come across a place where I baptize somebody who is not involved in a faith community somewhere, somehow. Okay. So kind of like a prerequisite type thing.

Yeah. I mean, that's definitely early in the conversation. It's like, hey, if I'm baptizing you, where are you connected? Like, I need to know that you're connected somewhere. Yeah. You're acknowledging the importance of being connected. Absolutely. For sure. Absolutely. And you know who else acknowledges that importance? Well, the Bible. The Bible acknowledges the importance of being gathered.

Again, we're having a different conversation about church membership and being a member of a faith, being part of the faith community.

The scripture doesn't say, like, thou shalt have thy name on the roll. But Acts chapter 2, right? There was this people got saved and they got converted and they joined up the faith community. They held all things in common. They devoted to prayer and the breaking of bread and the teaching of the disciples, right? So we see community life was very central in the life of the believer. And that's super important, right? The second part of that is Jesus himself was like a community dude.

Like he spent his time around people, you know, he was always surrounded by his people and sowing into others. Yeah. Those are very important, you know, without, and it's a different context because in Acts, of course, they didn't have church buildings and they didn't have the written word of God. So there was a different, I think, focus for that community life. But the Bible very much talks about us living in community. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we did do a podcast on community.

And I feel like this does build on that because we're expressing the importance of that community being in a church, your church membership. And, you know, people will argue that, you know, I don't have to attend church to be saved or go to heaven. Well, yeah, we're not debating that. You don't have to have a parachute to jump out of a plane, but it sure helps. Amen to that. That's a good one. That's a good one. I'm not going to debate that one with you.

So, yeah, I mean, I guess we're not here to say that, yeah, you're not going to go to heaven. and you're not saved if you're not a member of church.

We're discussing the importance. In our eyes, and like you just brought up in the scripture, of being part of that community and holding one another accountable and being there to support one another in difficult times and, you know, know that you're being prayed for and know that you're loved and all of those great things that come along with it. You know, the voting and all that stuff, that's not really part of it scripturally.

In the biblical term. In the biblical term, yes. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because I feel like we have a society, people are longing to belong. Sure. Yes. And I feel like the belonging that we want is to belong to the body of Christ.

And the amount of people that find that other places, like I laugh, like the amount of times you, I don't remember if it was like McDonald's or Wendy's or one of these fast food restaurants the other day we went in and they were like, they had their now hiring poster and they were like, you know, great hours, great pay, chance for advancement, being part of a family. And I'm like, really at a fast food restaurant? Like, okay.

Like if you told me somebody was like going to join like a career, like they're going They're aiming to work here for the rest of their lives. They're like, oh, well, I have a work family. I'm like, yo, I worked in fast food. Most of these people ain't going to be working here for the next eight months. Yeah, for sure. But sports, how many people, the sports team becomes family. But even that doesn't last. Right. Church membership or the longing to be part of the body of Christ doesn't go away.

You just displace it somewhere else. You're going to find your connection somewhere. It might be on a sports team. It might be at work. It might be in the HOA. It might be like, who knows where it's going to be. So we all have it. It's programmed into our DNA. Sure. Right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, how many times have we talked about, like, people that are just longing for that? They don't even really know that that's what they're longing for until they find it. Yeah, yeah.

Like, people are like, man, you know, I found, I'm just using Mount Zion as an example because that's where we're members. And so people are like, oh, man, I found what I've been missing. And I didn't know I was missing it until I found it. Right. You know what I mean? Right. So, well, and, and, and the other part, so the next part of that is think about Paul, you know, he writes to us about being the body of Christ. Yes.

Like we are meant to connect together and be part of something else. Right. Paul didn't say like, okay, you are saved unto yourself. Now go do your thing. Like you are part of something that Jesus is up to and you have a role to play and you have a part. And, and when you are disconnected from that, then there is still But like. You know, if you are a foot and you don't go to church, you'll still be a foot. You'll just be a foot.

You'll be like, what was that? Cousin It from the Addams family, right? That hand. Just get ready to say, what made you pick a foot? Feet are stinky. No, but you'll be the little hand. Like, he can't actually do much, right? He can't talk. But he just runs around like, ah, you know, like you don't cease being who you were created to be. you just don't have the tools and the context to do what you're called to do.

And when you do try to do other things, you're probably going to fail miserably at it because you don't have the support around you.

Like, you know, the other side I love, Jeremy, is I've had folks ask me like, well, where in the Bible does this have to be a member of a church? It's what we call implied reality. Ooh. Okay. Because, so let's just look at the New Testament. There are 27 New Testament books. Most of them, if not, you could argue all of them, but definitely most of them were written to, you got it, churches. They weren't written to individuals. They were written to groups of people.

It was implied that the Bible was written for a group of people. A group of people, yes. Right? Yep. And so when somebody says, do I have to be a member of a church? I don't think you have to be a member. Like I've told folks before, you know, as a pastor, I've had folks like asked like, well, should I join the church? I'm like, here's the deal. I'm going to love you and I'm going to serve you and I'm going to shepherd you the same way, whether you are a member or not.

In my opinion, the only two things that change at all, if you become a member of Mount Zion, number one, you get the right to vote in council meetings. And number two, you can serve on some, like you could be a deacon. You have to be a member of our church to be a deacon. Those are the only things that change. And so if you want to be able to vote on council meeting decisions, budgets and land purchases and stuff like that, then you need to do this.

If you want to be a deacon, if that's something that you feel called to, you need to be a member. If you just want to be a part of a body of Christ and support one another and pray for one another and work the mission together, guess what?

You don't have to be a member to do that. You have to be active. Yeah. And like you said, I mean, biblically speaking, it doesn't necessarily say be a member so you can vote on all these things. It means be involved. Right. Be present. Right. And... Wouldn't that have been awesome? Some dude in the back is like, Jesus, how many times must I forgive my neighbor? He's like, let me see thine membership record before I answer thou question.

I don't know. You know, like, because the flip side of that conversation, like, so what's the point of being a member of a church? Well, the point of being a member of a church is a discipleship. I think that's a huge one. Sorry, not to cut you off. Go, go. But just one thing that comes to mind for me. We oftentimes, I hate to be comparing work to church, but we oftentimes say people need to have a little skin in the game, so to speak.

So when you're committing to membership at Mount Zion, for example, you're saying, hey, this is my commitment to lead others and honor others and help others in the body of Mount Zion as well as the church as a whole. Right. So so it kind of puts a little a little skin in the game, so to speak, because you have this conscience like, hey, I committed to this. I'm going to I'm going to see it through type thing. Does that make sense? Yep. Yep. Yep.

Anyway, sorry. I hope I didn't mess your thought up. No, you're good. So so you get discipleship. Right. You have a regular you have a regular program, for lack of a better term, that you have rhythms of life. And you know that, you know, what church looks like, Bible studies, Sunday school, like you have that sort of anchor for discipleship, right? You have accountability. At least you should. Yes.

You know, somebody who's looking over, you have a group of people who's praying for you. If you're sliding, they're talking to you about it. If they're holding you in love, right? You have, I like what you talked about with like skin in the game. Because one of the things, dude, and I know like I could rubble some feathers with this one. I can't stand it when people church hop.

Yeah. like it bothers me so much. And, and even for ministers, like I've told, there's a few guys I know, like they're, they're evangelists. Like they go for this church to this church, this church. And I'm like, do you know how much different it is between being a pastor who just like pops into a church and preaches a message and goes home? Yeah. Besides now, like I've been the minister at Mount Zion for 15 years. There's a lot of good. There's a lot of bad. There's a lot of ugly.

There's been a lot of times that I'm like, this is for the birds. And I've had to be like, I easily could have been like, you know what? I'm gonna go find another church, put my profile out. Like I'm, I'm out of here. Right. But like, that's not what God had. Right. And now you're old. I just want to throw that. I did just turn 40. Yeah. Man. Think about it. Anyway. So I was just like, I've had almost half my life at this church. I've only been a member of two churches my entire life, Jeremy.

That's crazy. But anyway. Same. Yeah. But, but there is that sense of like, when you are a member of a church, like. Nope. Three. Sorry. I lied.

Stick stick with it like there's that sense of like you don't just get to cut bait and run yeah because you because you don't like something sure like that is not biblical and it has not the kingdom of god there is nothing about the kingdom of god that's like well if you get if you get angry take your ball and go home yeah if you don't like the fact that they put red carpet in instead of blue which i could leave a church over some red carpet but a lot of people

be leaving a lot of churches because there's a lot of red carpet, a lot of red carpet, but you know, like, like there's that sense of like, it kind of ties you in because man, like our whole culture is like, well, they didn't get my order right. So I'm never going back there again. Exactly. Oh, well, you know, they, they didn't do this right. So they don't get my service anymore. And church is not supposed to be that.

Yeah. It absolutely has. I mean, culture has definitely seeped in to, to the church in that regard. Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate. Yeah. It's like you have to practice things like loving the other like yourself. You have to practice like humble yourself. You know, if any of you think that he is sinless, he ought to take an excuse.

You actually have to practice those things to be rooted in a faith community for any long period of time. Right. Because it doesn't matter where you go. If you go to a church for long enough, you are going to have something. Absolutely. You know, like, I mean, And I've told people like, I'm the pastor at Mount Zion and there are things that happen I don't like. Yeah. And I have to, sometimes I have to pull up my big boy britches. I mean, think about it. Just like, just like your family.

Right. Like there are going to be things in your family that you're not happy with that you don't like. I mean, that's like, if you're involved in something long enough, that's going to happen. Doesn't matter what it is. Absolutely. The other piece you get by being an active part of a church family is you get the opportunity to participate in something bigger than you could do on your own. Oh, absolutely. Which is also one of those things like, we talk about that with denominations.

You know, our church recently, I say recently, in the past few years, left the Church of the Brethren and became Covenant Brethren. And in that transition, we talked about maybe being independent. And one of the things we talked about was like being a part of a denomination gives us the opportunity to take the little that we can do and add it to a bigger group for a greater impact.

And amplify it, yes. You know, so like we took an offering the other week at Mount Zion for education to help send kids to school in East Africa. I guarantee you that helping to send kids to a school in East Africa was not on Jessica and I's radar until we got that letter and it was like, wow, this is a really big need and we could help with that. And we didn't give much. It's not like we cut a $1,000 check.

We gave a little and we put it in. But together, the 200 or so people that were at church that day, we raised, I don't know, it was close to a thousand bucks. And I think I said it took $100 to send a kid for a year, I think was right. I don't remember. I think it was $100. So we sent 10 kids to school for the year, paid for all their books and all that stuff. Like, you know, so that's really cool to be a part of that. And so when you're a member of a church, you get to do that.

Like you may not, your kids may be grown and gone, but you could be part of children's ministry. You can donate canned ravioli, you know, or do whatever you need to do to support that mission that you don't get to do if you're not a member of a church somewhere. Yeah. You know what I mean? And yeah, you know, one of the ones that's sticking to me, the biggest to me is the accountability that you have. I mean, or should have if you're involved. Right.

Because I just think of how easy it would be to not be part of a faith community and just decide, yeah, you know what? I'm not going to church this Sunday. Or, hey, let's go to this church this Sunday. Hey, let's go to this church this Sunday.

Your your opportunity for accountability to anybody else is out the window because you're not building relationships it's it's real easy to run away from a message that you heard that maybe is speaking right to you and you know it and you're like you know what yeah we're not going to go back there we're just going to go over here because i didn't like the way that made me feel right when actually it's conviction so yeah accountability for me is is a huge one yeah And as a minister,

like I, I will follow up with people. Right. Yeah. I like, I don't have a magic number. It kind of depends on the person. Like there are people in our church. If I don't see them for three weeks, I don't panic. Right. Because I know like they that's just their pattern. Right. So like if I don't see them for three weeks, I'm like, oh, all right. Well, you know, there are other people. If I don't see them for three weeks, like I'm calling.

Gotcha. Yeah. Right. And there's some people, if I don't see them for two weeks, I'll call them. And it's not because I'm like, where you been? You need to be at church. It's more like, is there something wrong? Like, are they OK? Are they? Yeah. You know, it's not because I'm trying to be a pest. It's because as a shepherd of the church, that's part of my job. You know, that's the other thing.

You as the pastor, yes, but there are probably other people in church that have built that relationship with other people where, like, hey, I haven't seen so-and-so for like three weeks. I wonder where they've been. Like, I'm going to check on them. Yeah. That's not just you. Yeah. That is the membership of the church. That's their job. Oh, yeah. And it's happening. Oh, yeah. I'll get people who, like, will say to me, they're like, hey, where's this person? I'm like, I don't know.

Maybe you should check on them. Yeah. You know, I like to encourage that a little bit. And I tell people, like, so if you are a member of Mount Zion and you are listening to me right now and I call you, it's not because I'm, like, some overbearing pastor who's like, you need to make sure you get to church and put your tithe on the plate. Like, I care. Like, I want to know. Like, maybe someone got sick. Maybe there was an accident. Maybe. I don't know.

Like, so if I call you and, like, hey, I've just missed you. Then it is because I care. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, and most people, I feel like most people already know that. Yeah, I think so. And I think that would be true for anybody in our church that anybody else in our church reached out to them. They would be like, oh, man. Yeah. So-and-so really cares. Which, by the way, is hard because our church has grown.

It's, yeah, I was just talking about that tonight when we were practicing music. Yeah. You know, it's hard because, I mean, before, I could stand in the front of the sanctuary and just, I knew where they sat. That's often how I would do it is I would go in during the middle of the week and I would stand there and I would like kind of in my brain go. Take the mental picture.

Yeah. And go, okay, well, these people I haven't seen. Like now our church is, you know, 200 people strong almost every Sunday. And that's a whole different ballgame because that actually attributes to probably 350, 400 people on any time. And so it can be easy to get lost in the shuffle. And that's why you have to have that membership. You have to have that accountability. Right. Those things matter because that's how you grow. Yeah. So, here's the last part.

Showing up to church is not enough. For a vital... To live your life as Jesus wants you to live. Just showing up to church ain't cutting it. Like we talked about before. Will you get to heaven? Sure. You can get to heaven and only show to church 50% of the time. Absolutely. You can go to heaven if you've never been to church. Chief on the cross, right? But in order for us to achieve what Jesus wants for us. It's a reciprocal relationship. And man, we can be so consumer-driven.

This is one of my big things about church sometimes. I'm going to show up and the preacher's going to preach to me and the band's going to sing for me and the worship leader's going to pray for me and the Sunday school teacher's going to teach me a lesson and I'm going to go home. I'm going to go eat lunch and then I'm going to go home. Yeah. No, that's not how this is supposed to work. It is a reciprocal relationship.

And so it's awesome if you go to church. It's awesome if you go to church every week. If you go 52 out of 52, awesome. But if all you do is that and you aren't involved with discipleship or accountability or praying for one another or any of those mutual ministries, then you are missing an amazing opportunity to grow in Christ. Absolutely, yes. So that to me is the kicker. That's why we need church. And I even hate to say like even sitting here like church membership.

Yeah, you're right. I mean membership, like you said, the only things about Zion that membership means is you get a vote and you could be a deacon. I mean there's people that are not members of our church on paper that I would argue are full members by participation in the ministry. So here's the other fun fact. This may get me excommunicated. Oh, I don't, I don't. Is that why you're doing it at the end? So we can cut it off if we have to. Okay. I don't teach membership class.

Oh, I don't do it anymore. Okay. I stopped doing it. Okay. I stopped doing it. I'm not mad. I know you're not mad, but this may pop up in a meeting somewhere. And the reason I don't do it, A, because I don't see in the Bible what we're supposed to. Okay. Fair. And B, it assumes a lot of things. And so if somebody comes to me and they either want to be a member of the church or they want to be baptized, I have a personal one-on-one conversation with that person.

I would say that's more important than a membership class anyway. Right. And we talk about some of the things that they might want to know. Now, like two baptisms ago, I think we had a lot of brand new people. We did like a lunch and I went over like, here's the church, here's what we do, and here's how we do it. But we didn't, like there was no book, there was no assignment, there was no like, none of that stuff, right? No test you have to pass. Well, maybe we should do that.

But there was none of that because I think it adds something to it that was never meant to be. The membership class almost makes it seem like you have to pass this in order to be here. And you have to do this to get entry. If you want to be a part of our faith community, then you have to know these things. Gotcha. And I don't think that – and part of that's generational. I mean, part of this conversation is generational, I think.

I think we come from a generation that's very skeptical of organized anything and. Fair. Most people, you know, in our generation just are naturally skeptic, but yeah, so I don't do that. I just, I don't find it helpful.

I don't, I don't think it, I think it puts expectations on people that, that scares them off before we even get the conversation started. So instead I'd say we would just go and be like, Hey, what questions do you have about the church? Do you have questions about our faith statement? Do you have questions about what we do as a church? Do you know what baptism means? You know, just those kinds of things. Honestly, it's a lot more work.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It'd be a lot easier, actually, to just have a class and just have everybody sit there and not have the personal connection. Right. Yes, you're absolutely right. It takes more work and more effort. And actually, I mean, I'd argue that it's a better option than having a class. Oh, I've gotten to know some people. It's been really nice. Because even some of the questions I've gotten asked, there's no way they're actually going to ask that question in a membership class.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. So if you're not a member of a church, be one. And not just a role setter. Yes. Not just somebody whose name's on the list. Not just a voter. Not a voter. I mean, it's good to be a voter too, but you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Be active, be involved. Hey, if you don't have a church you're a member of and you're in Rockham County, we'd love to have you in Mount Zion. Absolutely. You can put up with the preacher, you can put up with the rest of them.

Preacher's the lower point. That's debatable. All right, so now I got to tell you what brought up our conversation about church tonight. Yeah, tell me. So we were practicing music. We were getting done, and somebody made a comment, like, wasn't there some conversation about, like, turning the stage so we could fit more seating in here? And I was like, I don't know, but that actually sounds like a great idea. So we're here, like, picturing our head, like, hey, let's blow this wall out,

and let's turn the stage this way, and we could fit all this extra seating right here. Yeah. And what'd you tell them? I didn't say anything else. I just said it'd be a great idea. You didn't tell them the thing? No, I didn't tell them the thing. I just said I'd love to have a lot more people here. Because you know what? You know what?

For those of you guys who don't know, whenever somebody at church asks me what we're going to do about building, I always say, I don't know if that's the next guy's problem. That's the next guy's problem. Let him figure it out. Guess what? What? I'm willing to find out. Ooh. All right. Because Jesus is going to do what he's going to do. That is true. Jesus is going to do what he wants to do. That's right. He drug me kicking and screaming into some other things.

This would not be the first time. And guess what? It ain't going to be the last time. It ain't going to be the last time either. Jesus probably looks at me like I'm a two-year-old. Like, John, get your binky. We're going to do this. To be fair, he probably looks at all of us like that from time to time, for sure. That is true. Buddy, it's been a great night. Amen, brother. And a shout-out to the person who gave this topic to us. And if you have an idea for a podcast, please do reach out to us.

And in all seriousness, go be a member of a church. find somewhere that you can love and serve and grow and do all the things that Jesus has asked you to do because he has a mission for you and it's best done as a member of the local faith. Absolutely. God bless you next time. I did. Music.