Thoughts Of Some Guy In Ohio
Thoughts Of Some Guy In Ohio
Let's Talk About Church Membership Part 1
Ready to transform your understanding of church membership? Tune in as we take a heartfelt journey from the electrifying world of Ohio State football to the spiritually enriching path of being a church member. Inspired by Thom Rainer's "I Am a Church Member," we unpack widespread misconceptions and illuminate what it means to truly belong to a church and God's kingdom. Reflecting on our personal experiences, we offer insights into how membership can sometimes be misunderstood or misused and how this new class aims to guide both newcomers and seasoned members alike towards a deeper connection with their faith community.
Consider this: only about 20% of church members actually serve their communities. We discuss the profound concept of sacrificial love as fundamental to church membership and challenge the notion of passive attendance. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 13, we explore how love for God and one another should fuel our unity and service. Imagine churches becoming vibrant hubs of faith, where every member actively contributes to the community using their God-given talents. Discover how embracing accountability and fully participating can transform not only your individual faith journey but the entire body of Christ.
Our conversation culminates in a stirring call to live sacrificially for God's eternal kingdom. Instead of settling for complacency in personal salvation, we emphasize the responsibility to spread the gospel and fulfill the Great Commission. Reflect with us on the idea that true service requires personal sacrifice and that prioritizing God’s kingdom over temporary pursuits is what truly matters. This episode is a reminder and an invitation to reassess our commitment to being active members of a faith community, dedicated to the growth and multiplication of God’s everlasting kingdom.
Hey, good morning everyone. One go Ohio State. Right, I'm excited, for that Should be a good game today. Watching Notre Dame last night pull out quite a stunner, so you know that'll be fun to watch. So, lord willing, ohio State gets through today, confident that we will Looking for the national championship. But, you know, go Ohio State If you're not a Buckeye fan. Sorry about that, but I'm confident that we will. You know, looking for the national championship, but you know, go Ohio State If you're not a Buckeye fan. Sorry about that, but I'm not sorry. No, so I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1:It's been a little while since I've done a video, but partly to kind of follow up with where we are right now. As far as a church, at the moment we're doing a class and we actually just started it last Sunday and it's based on the book by Tom Rainer called I Am a Church Member. If you've never read any of Tom Rainer's stuff, I absolutely love it. One being, most of his books are really short, which are nice, but a lot of it's grounded in just personal experience and research that he's done. I think that's a huge thing. If you've ever met me, I'm like a big numbers statistics type of person. So I love that kind of information, and so part of the reason why I think this was a necessary step for us is we've seen a lot of newer faces come into our church and join our church, a lot of people that don't really have much of a church background. I don't really have much of a church background and, to be honest, if you would have talked to me about 10 years ago, I would have probably told you that I didn't think church membership was important, and so let me kind of explain.
Speaker 1:My thought process when I first got into ministry was I saw a lot of people who were church members who weren't doing much else except complaining because their perceived needs weren't being met or they were using their membership to kind of leverage and get things that they wanted. There was always seem to be and listen, I know it's in every church. I'm not trying to say it's just ours, because I know it's everywhere, but in almost every church I've been a part of, there's this understanding, this misunderstanding of what church membership is and what it means to belong to a church. Right, and so I've seen people use their membership to get what they want. I've seen decisions made based on something that made a member feel better over something that might have been actually better for the church as a whole. I've seen people give money and expect it to be used and give stipulations for its use, so much so that if it wasn't used properly, they would take it back and listen. I'm just being honest. I've seen church membership abused in my lifetime, and so a couple of years ago I was not a big fan of making someone a member of church or really emphasizing being a member, because what I saw was a misunderstanding of what that means. People would leverage it, people would use it to get what they want. They assume because they gave so much money or because they remember that their opinions mattered over everything else, not to mention the church. But a lot of people would use their membership to kind of justify behavior and why they did things that they did. And instead of looking at the bigger picture, right, looking at the kingdom as a whole and realizing that being a member of a church means you're part of a body, you and I, as church members, are now part of the kingdom of God, right? So the church as a whole, the capital C big church, and so we thought it was necessary to kind of address this, especially with some new believers that we've had join us in the last year or so, but also with some older members.
Speaker 1:What does it look like to be a church member? And so that's where Tom Rainer came in, and I really like his approach. Two reasons One, his ideas and thoughts are grounded in reality. So he does a lot of research, he works with a lot of churches. His ton of experience. The other reason I like him is he gets straight to the point. If you've ever met me, I'm really just kind of like hey, let's have this conversation, because I think sometimes beating around the bush or putting stuff off I'm not perfect at it, but I think that the best way to handle really a lot of conversations is just to have them and be direct. And so Tom Rainer is really direct. So let's take a look at this. And he looks at this from a biblical perspective.
Speaker 1:So chapter one of his book is I'm going to be a functional church member. I'm going to be a functional church member, right. And so he uses 1 Corinthians, all of 1 Corinthians 12, all of 1 Corinthians 13,. And then he finds himself back in 1 Corinthians 14. So 1 Corinthians 12, if you've ever read it is where Paul is writing church in Corinth and he is laying out all these expectations and he's talking about the body of believers as a whole and in the different gifts that they have. Some are preachers, some are teachers, some speak in tongues, some interpret but he talks about how important the body is right.
Speaker 1:And so he uses the analogy of the body to say listen, the eye can't function without the nose, the nose can't function without the ear, the hand can't say to the foot I don't need you. So he's talking about something that's kind of a universal understanding that our body functions together Like the way God created us is. Our body is supposed to work together. All of the different parts of me and you have a purpose. And when the body is functioning like it's supposed to, we can do incredible things. I mean, just look at athletes, some of the stuff that they can accomplish, right, and I know they're not the only ones. But just there's something really incredible about how the body works together. And so when Paul is using this analogy, he's speaking to the church in Corinth, he says listen, when everything is working like it's supposed to, we win. The body as a whole wins, we are successful, but when one part of the body fails to do what it's supposed to do, then we all lose. We all fail, and I think that this is a really important understanding for us, because you and I as a whole understand that if a part of our body hurts, so for instance, your back right I've had back problems in my later 20s early 30s.
Speaker 1:My back for about 10 years gave me incredible pain. There was about a six-month period 10 years ago where I spent most of my life laying around on floors trying to function, because trying to sit up or do anything else like I hurt my back, and so that was hard for me, because I was an athlete in high school and I did the things I needed to do and I took care of myself and I worked out the weightlifting, all of that. But when I hurt my back, it really got in the way of everything else and it was debilitating, and so my back hurting allowed the rest of my body to not function properly. It got in the way, the pain was incredible. Trying to do simple tasks was a challenge, and so when we talk about, when Paul talks about how the body wins and loses together, I always think about that, because when my body is functioning like it's supposed to, it's successful. But if one part of it fails, if one part of it's not living up to its expectation, then everything hurts right. And so here's why that's important to me and to the church.
Speaker 1:When Paul is talking about this analogy, he's talking about how the church as a whole is supposed to function together. Now the church in Corinth is confused. They're messed up. There's a lot of problems in that church, there's a lot of misunderstanding, and some people think membership gets them something and it doesn't, or they're holding it over other people's heads. And when Paul gets back to 1 Corinthians 14, he addresses that, that they really have this misunderstanding of what the body is supposed to be and what it's supposed to do. So he lays it out in chapter 12, says listen, everything is supposed to work together.
Speaker 1:If you are part of a church, if you're a member of a church, you're there for a reason, you have a function, you have a purpose. And so that's where Tom Rainer lands with chapter one is I'm going to be a functioning church member, I'm going to choose to actively participate in the health and the growth of the church, and this is more than just, and so in the chapter one, tom Rader compares it to a country club. If you work, you know if you belong to a country club. You just have to pay your dues, right. Pay a little bit of money, people serve you, you get all these cool benefits being part of a church.
Speaker 1:A biblical understanding of membership of a church is dramatically different. It's not about what the church as a whole can do for you, but it's about what you bring to the church, right. And so I like what he says here, and once again I go back to him because I think Tom Rainer says what needs to be said In his book. He says do you know how to remain a member of a country club? Pay your dues, do that, and people will be available to serve you. Do you know how to remain a biblical member of a church? Give abundantly and serve without hesitation.
Speaker 1:Note the italicized word biblical. Sure, you can remain on the rolls of many churches and never show up or give. You can remain an active member in other churches by being a CEO Christian or a Christmas and Easter only. You can even be a revered member in a number of churches by giving a nice sum to the church each year, even though you never lift a finger in service or ministry. But please understand that type of membership is not biblical membership. That approach to membership is man-made, man-centered and man-maintained. It is totally contrary to what the Bible teaches. It has no place in our churches. Biblical church membership gives without qualification. Biblical membership views the tithes and offerings as joyous giving. There are no strings attached. Biblical church membership serves and ministers as a natural way of doing things. Biblical church membership is functioning membership. And once again I like what he has to say because I think it's true and I think that we as a whole have lost the understanding that when we are a member of a church, it's not just about giving a bunch of money one time. It's not just about showing up twice a year. It's not just about showing up and voting when it's that time of year. It's about actually so.
Speaker 1:Being a biblical member of a church is about actively participating and serving and giving to the church sacrificially. Do you understand that? That it's about sacrifice. The early church could not have made it as far as it has in today's world had those who were part of the church not lived sacrificially. The church in today's context cannot survive if its members don't value and understand that sacrifices will have to be made to further the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:Church membership, biblical church membership, is about sacrifice. It's about using the talents and gifts that God has given you to further the kingdom of God Sometimes, oftentimes, most of the time at our expense. And it's not about losing my life. It is, but it isn't. God calls us to give up things. He calls us to be more, to do more, because what the church is trying to accomplish is eternal.
Speaker 1:Being part of a church, serving in a church, has eternal impact, not only for you and me, but for those in our community, around us. We are called to give sacrificially to further the kingdom of God Because, as a Christian, the most important thing you can do is to bring people to the knowledge of who Jesus is, is to bring people to the knowledge of who Jesus is. And so when Tom Rainer writes this book and what he's seen in his research and I really encourage you to read it is most people have a poor understanding of church membership today. They show up, they punch a time clock, they get what they want out of it, they go home and then they do it all again a week later. But you and I are called to do more, to give more, to sacrifice more, to do whatever we can to further the kingdom of God and the spread of the gospel in our communities. Church membership is not a right, it's a privilege. You and I get to be part of something bigger than ourselves, you know.
Speaker 1:The crazy thing is and once again, going back to statistics, throughout the course of the last 30 years, so much research has been done and has found that it doesn't matter how big a church is only, on average, only about 20% of the people who are connected to a church or claim to be a member of a church, only about 20% of the people actually actively participate in serving on a regular basis. So that means that out of a church of 100, on average, only 20 people commit to serving the church regularly. Think about that. Think about how exhausting it is to be part of a church where more than half of the body doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Imagine if you woke up one day and half your body just decided to stop working. The strain and the stress of that would drive us all crazy. But we accept it in the church every day the strain and the stress of that would drive us all crazy, but we accept it in the church every day.
Speaker 1:We don't hold people accountable, we don't challenge people to do more. We don't hold ourselves accountable for how we're serving in the church and how we're giving to the church financially, how we're giving to the church with our time and our effort. If you are part of a church, if you have committed yourself to being a church member, how we're giving to the church with our time and our effort. If you are part of a church, if you have committed yourself to being a church member, then God has called you there for a reason and he has given you a set of skills, a set of talents to be part of the functioning body of Christ. And if you're failing to live up to that, I think you have to ask yourself some hard questions. Why am I not doing more? Why am I only taking and never giving? Why am I not being a functioning member of the church body? And listen, I know that's a hard question to ask. I know some people are probably even going to get offended by that. And that's okay, because in order to be a functional church member, a biblically functional church member, you are called to serve and sacrifice for the good of the kingdom always. We gave up, we give up our life for the kingdom because God allowed Jesus to give up his life for us. That's it. That's how this works. It doesn't mean we can't do other things, it doesn't mean that God doesn't bless us in other ways, but it does mean that you and I are called to live sacrificially. Not just the staff, not just the leadership, not just those who serve, but every person is supposed to give to the best of their ability to serve and function as the church was created to do together.
Speaker 1:And then again, going back to Paul, paul goes back to. He continues in the 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We all know this chapter because if you've ever been to a wedding, it's read at almost every wedding I've ever been to. But Paul says that we do all of this in love. Listen, paul's not talking about marriage in the context of 1 Corinthians 13. He's talking to a church that doesn't serve each other because they don't love each other. He's talking to a church that doesn't serve correctly because it doesn't actually love God. They've made it all about themselves. And Paul says if you truly love one another, you will serve one another, you will serve in this body. You will. You will not hold crutches, you will seek peace, you will find unity. All of those, all of those things we expect and we applaud for a husband and wife. Paul says you will do this with the person who's sitting next to you in the pew, in the chair, whatever that looks like Because serving in the church stems from our love, not only for each other but our love for the kingdom, that we love God so much that we give up parts of our lives to serve and to sacrifice on his behalf, because he sacrificed so much for us. Imagine a church that truly functioned. Imagine a church full of members who truly lived up to the sacrificial love that God has called us to, and how that would change every church across the nation, every church across the world. Imagine if people came into our church and they saw not only that we loved each other but that we were willing to give up our time and our energy to further the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:You know I had someone ask me a question recently and I wasn't really sure how to answer it Because in my mind, the answer I wanted to give was probably a little more direct and harsh, and while I do think that sometimes there's a place, you know, a need for those conversations, I do try to temper conversations with grace and understanding, especially when someone's trying to figure things out, and we were talking about. You know my personal belief, right? This is me Because I believe God has called me to live in such a way that then worldly wealth is not on the table for me. It's not that God hasn't blessed us, it's not that God doesn't take care of us, but I believe at the end of my life that when I die, what really matters right is when I go to heaven and, lord willing, he allows me to see all the people that I brought to Jesus, all the people that I've helped secure their eternity.
Speaker 1:Not me, obviously I can't die for them but all the people that I've influenced and I've shared my faith with and that I've loved and that have made the decision to follow Jesus, whether a small part of what I did or a large part of what I did led them to that decision. That's how I define success is when I die and God calls me a good and faithful servant, it's because I went out there and I lived the way that I was supposed to and I sacrificed the way that I was supposed to and the kingdom of God was furthered because of my efforts and my energy and all of that. That matters to me. It matters to me a lot, and you know the person I was talking to. We were having this conversation and they said you know what about those of us who don't feel like we're doing as much, or we're not really, we just feel like we're not doing enough. And we really didn't finish that conversation because I think there was a bigger conversation that needed to happen and in time it will.
Speaker 1:But thinking about it now, what I should have said is if you feel like you're not doing enough, if you feel like maybe you're missing the mark, then I think it's time to start praying and asking God how can I do more? Because I think that that is God and that's the spirit inside you, nudging you, helping you to understand that you're called to do more, to be more, to further the kingdom in a way you've never seen possible, and I think that that's how everyone's supposed to be. I really do. I believe our purpose in life is to spread the news of the gospel, to fulfill the great commission that Matthew gives us at the end of chapter 28, to go into the world to share the teachings that Jesus shared, to baptize people in the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit, to go to the ends of the earth. I believe that is the call for every single person who follows Christ, no exception, no excuse. Everyone is supposed to live in such a way that the kingdom is that much bigger because of how I live my life.
Speaker 1:But I also think that a lot of people have settled and become content that their salvation is secure, and then it's not their responsibility, nor do they care if other people come to know Jesus because of them. In there lies the problem. If we lose sight of the mission, if we lose sight of what our real purpose is, if we're not building the kingdom of God, then we're building our own. In there lies the problem, because anything that I build on this earth is temporary. It will fade Someday. There will be a day when no one remembers my name. I believe that there will come a day when whatever legacy I have left will fade away to dust, unless I'm invested in the eternal kingdom, the one that will last forever, the one that will continue long after my death and long after yours.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about being a functional church member, I think we have to shift how we view it. Functional church member I think we have to shift how we view it. Being part of a church is not about us. It's not about how it benefits me or what I can get out of it, or whether or not I like this or that or whatever and we're going to get to that because Tom Rainer is going to talk about this.
Speaker 1:Being a biblical member, being a functional, biblical member of the church, is choosing every day to live sacrificially to further the kingdom and to use the gifts and talents and the finances and all of that that God has given you to further the kingdom of God. I'm going to say this and I'm going to end with it because I believe it to be true If being part of a church or being an active member of a church hasn't cost you something, then I think you're doing it wrong. If choosing to follow God and further his kingdom hasn't cost you something, then I would argue you're not really living up to what God is calling us to do. We're called to sacrifice. We're called to sacrifice. We're called to love. We're called to use our talents. We're called to serve not only each other, but to serve those who don't know who Jesus is. We are called to live and be a functioning member of the body of Christ. I think we've lost sight of what it is to be the member of a church.
Speaker 1:I pray not only for our church, for this church that I'm part of now, but for every church that people start to realize that living for the kingdom is the only thing that really matters. You have a choice you can either have your kingdom, which is temporary, or you can have the kingdom of God, which is eternal. The kingdom of God is going to require sacrifice. It's going to require time and energy and putting the things that I want aside in order to further not only his church here on earth, but to further the knowledge and the spread of the gospel, so that his eternal kingdom continues to grow and multiply. Being a church member is not about you, it's not about me, it's about the kingdom. All right, I hope you guys have a good day. Bye.