It is our desire that “body life” at Dixiana be one of connections, one where Gospel community is real and alive.
We place great importance on the Gospel community because the Word of God does the same.
- to Him be glory in the church. Ephesians 3:21
- Christ is the Head of the Church. Ephesians 5:23
- Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, Ephesians 5:25
Why be a church member? Why not just be able to go and participate?
I think the answer is that you should be a church member. But that’s not even a clear word—what does “member” mean?
What I mean by “member” is somebody who, whether by a signature or a word of commitment or promise, says, “I’m committed to a people, a people who hear the word of God preached, a people who perform the ordinances that Jesus gave to his church (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and a people who commit to the ‘one another’ commandments (love each other, exhort each other, admonish each other, hold each other accountable).”
Those commitments are what membership is. And I think something is wrong if you resist putting your name on the line for that.
If you want to say, “OK, I believe the New Testament says, ‘Be a part of a community, give yourself to ministering there and receiving ministry there, and advancing the cause of the gospel there, and upholding the name of Jesus there, and doing mission there,’ and I’m a part of that,” then to resist putting your name on the line for that is probably not a biblical conviction. It’s probably an American, independent, give-me-elbow-room, don’t-get-in-my-face-too-often conviction, which I don’t think is biblical.
The reason for even using the word “member” is because of 1 Corinthians 12-14, where Paul uses the word “member” in a body analogy.
The local church—not just the global church, but the local church—is a body. The reason we know it’s local and not just global is because, while in Ephesians 1 and Colossians he talks about Christ as the head of the body, in 1 Corinthians 12 he’s talking about a head with eyes and ears that are members of the body.
So the body analogy has one global meaning, and it has one local meaning. There’s global membership in the body universal, and there’s local membership in the body where I’m a finger or an eye or an ear or a foot. And everybody is a member.
So the word “member” in 1 Corinthians 12-14 means you’re part of a local organism, and the finger belongs. It should care about what happens to the eye, and the eye what happens to the finger. And it should function in a way that has some organic coherence to it.
It’s very hard to do what the Bible calls a church to do unless it knows who are the members and who aren’t. Who are the people that want to be treated as members here?
A very simple example of this is the biblical concept of church discipline.
In 1 Corinthians 5, for example, Paul says that the man who is sleeping with his mother-in-law (or stepmother) should be put out of the church because he is so proud and arrogant about his sin, and unrepentant and resistant to any kind of exhortation. But how can you put him out? He could just say, “I just go here! They can’t put me out of anything. I’m not in anything!”
And I think a lot of people don’t want to be in anything because they don’t even like the idea of being able to be put out of something.
So for all those reasons, even though there’s no sentence in the Bible that says, “There is such a thing as church membership, and thou shalt be a church member,” I think it’s implied in the nature of the church and of Christian discipleship that everybody should, by a covenant commitment of some kind, put their name on the line saying, “I’m here. While I’m in this place, and until God leads me otherwise, these are my people and I’m committed here.”
Matt Chandler at the Village Church in Dallas explains getting connected this way:
WHAT IS BIBLICAL COMMUNITY?
The God we worship is a God Who has eternally existed in community. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have dwelled in perfect unity, love and joy before and throughout time. This triune God created humanity as the chief of His creations for the display of this relationship.
In the beginning it was written that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Man was walking in the garden with God and without sin and yet such a relationship was not ideal. It was not in accordance with the purpose of the Creator for the creature.
We read in the Gospels that among Jesus’ final words before the cross was a prayer for the unity of His people, a unity expressive of the unity found within the godhead (John 17:21-22). We know from the testimony of the early church that community was the natural result of the Spirit’s influence upon the Church (Acts 2:42-47).
It is apparent that community is not some peripheral Christian teaching but is central to the outworking of God’s purpose in the world. God is glorified when He is properly reflected; by dwelling in unity, we rightly image our communal Maker. In being obedient to this calling, The Village Church urges each member to be
deeply involved in the lives of others, to “do life together.” Unfortunately, we have not always done a great job of explaining exactly what this phrase means. This paper will serve as a short introduction to the topic of biblical community and what it is that we mean when we commend “doing life.”
Our hope for us is not that we would simply hang out with each other, but rather, that we would engage in a battle for deep and abiding relationships within the body. We find the following characteristics to be particularly indicative of biblicalcommunity:
1. Love
Love can be a rather ambiguous term. We love our wives, our children, our
dogs, Mexican food and the Dallas Cowboys. Surely we do not mean the
same thing in each use of the term.
Five times in letter of 1st John, the apostle writes that believers are to love
one another. However, he does not leave the command in ambiguity.
Rather, he qualifies the command by showing that love is best represented
by the sending of the Son to die for our sins and thus is inherently sacrificial
(1 John 3:16-18). Let us love in truth and deed and not merely in word.
Love which is not sacrificial is really not love.
2. Consistency
The early church pictured in the book of Acts met daily to encourage each
other and worship together. Hebrews 10 tells us to not neglect meeting
together as some are in the habit of doing, while chapter 4 tells us to exhort
one another daily. A clear Scriptural admonition exists toward long lasting
relationships and deeply consistent presence in the lives of others.
Occasional or infrequent gatherings do not capture the spirit of the text.
3. Worship
The early church spent its time in engaging in celebration of the Lord and the
remembrance of the gospel through the means of grace which were
provided. We therefore find it essential for biblical community to be about the pursuit of the Lord through the Lord ’s Supper, prayer, singing and the
reading and teaching of the Scriptures.
4. Authenticity
People who gather together and yet do not truly know each other cannot
rightly be called a community. The Bible commands the confession of sin,
struggles and praises, which is evidence of a life of transparency. This
characteristic also bears with it a commitment to engage in the proper means
of fighting back sin for the good of the sinner, the health of the body and the
glory of the Lord. Oftentimes such a dedication to put sin to death includes
the proper and godly use of the steps of discipline as outlined in Matthew 18.
Given the characteristics of community, what are the practical implications? While the list could be quite extensive, a large number of the requirements could easily be seen by doing a thorough search of the dozens of “one another” passages especially within the New Testament. Such passages tell believers to:
- Love one another (John 13:34, 15:12)
- Outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10)
- Live in harmony with one another (Romans 12:16)
- Comfort and agree with one another (2 Corinthians 13:11)
- Serve one another (John 13:1-20; Galatians 5:13)
- Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
- Forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32)
- Submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21)
- Be honest with one another (Colossians 3:9)
- Encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
- Confess to one another (James 5:16)
- Pray for one another (James 5:16)
We want to be distinct in the way in we work, speak, think, rest and play. We want to do those things which glorify our gracious Lord and Savior. To properly reflect His communal nature and to follow His communal commands, we must as a people engage in fellowship which is sacrificially loving, consistent, worshipful, and authentically transparent. In this way, we seek to “do life together.”
