When I wrote about the importance of membership earlier this week a few people objected that I only provided pragmatic reasons for church membership, not actual biblical reasons. I happen to think that my pragmatic reasons were rooted in biblical principles, but nevertheless, there are more explicitly chapter-and-verse arguments that can be made in support of church membership.
My good friend Jason Helopoulos, a PCA church planter in East Lansing, offers this by way of bolstering my argument:
Likewise, R. Scott Clark weighed in on his blog with biblical support for official church membership:
The bottom line is that if you are looking for a verse that talks about a membership class and certificates of transfer, you won’t find it. But if you are looking for the concepts of a defined in/out community, record-keeping, covenant making, and submission to a recognized body that exercises authority over the circumscribed group, you can find all of that in both testaments.
Oh yeah, and the word member is in the Bible too.
