Musing
on “Membership Matters”
Thoughts
on the nature and standards of church membership
Designed
to provoke my denomination (and others) to think seriously about membership
matters.
By
Keith Drury Associate Professor of Religion, Indiana Wesleyan University Winter,
2005
1.
Lowering Membership Standards
Robert Leonard is
worried about declining membership. He’s seen the bottom drop out of his national
figures in the last 50 years—from 4.1 million in 1959 down to 1.6 million this
year. That’s a “reverse growth rate”
(as the church growth movement used to call it) of –.013 per year. While losing less than 2% of membership a
year never seems to be an “emergency,” over 50 years it can pile up and bite
you in the rear [pocket].
Why aren’t they
attracting new members? Daniel Wilson from the New Jersey region
thinks they’ve got to reach out to the younger people. He along with other leaders thinks the
membership standards may be too high for the newer generations. They want to shorten the length of new member
training, cut out some of the hoops a candidate has to jump though, and maybe
even compromise on some of the stringent requirements for new members.
So what do you
think? To get themselves on the map again should these guys lower
standards to grow or leave them high because people value things more when they
cost more? What do you think?
So which denomination
are we talking about here? None. The story above is about the
Masons. Their membership has been
dwindling since the 1950’s. They are
desperately trying to reach what they call “the younger generations 21-55”
(55?). They’re shortening the year-long
membership process collapsing the first three (of 33) Masonic steps (“degrees”)
in an attempt to bring in the next generation and keep their local “lodges”
alive. While they are still unwilling to
open up membership to women (the Mason’s version of the church’s WMS is the
“Eastern Star”) they are willing to make other compromises. After 50 years of declining membership they
think its time.
So what is the lesson
for us church folk?
Think about these things.
Discuss them with someone else who cares about the church like you do.
So what do you think?
2.
Church Membership in the Early Church
Recently a lady told me God had reveled to her that their
church should have no membership since the early church had no membership. Is she right? Membership is a hot topic today. Some denominations are trying to decide if
practicing homosexuals can be members of their church. Other denominations have long ago accepted
the idea of “membership as the mission field not the mission force” and thus
accept anybody who wants to join into membership, including practicing gay a
lesbians. These more open denominations
fight about ordaining gays (or elevating then to a bishop) and not about
membership standards. Still other
denominations (like my own the Wesleyans) have strict membership standards
(often with twice as many attendees as members) but we are pondering changes in
our membership standards that still include a ban on gambling, alcohol and
tobacco. Conservative ministers in liberal denominations are aghast that we are
still debating lottery tickets while they are fighting about gay bishops!
In the ongoing debates people often toss the Bible and early
church history around as arguments for this or that position. So in the interest of truth this article
outlines how the early church actually practiced membership matters.
1. At the very beginning of the church all the converts were
already members. The first Christians were Jews and thus already were
“members” of the Jewish faith and Christianity was not considered a separate
religion. “Becoming a Christian” was for
them a matter of belief—believing that Jesus was indeed the promised messiah of
Israel. The Jews already had a strict
behavioral code and thus candidates needed little “cleaning up.” In fact at first there was nothing to “take
them in” to. The “church” at first acted
like a Jewish sect that hoped to convince all Jews that Jesus was the
messiah. As soon as a Jew believed the
gospel they were baptized and became a part of the house fellowship of other
Christian Jews. They needed no
instruction on the existence of one God or even on how to live a moral life—in
some ways the Jewish lifestyle was stricter than the Christian standard would
be. A “convert” at the very beginning
had a short trip to “membership” in the Christian group—believe and be baptized—both
of these could be accomplished in one day.
These converts’ membership induction was more like joining a small group
today and thus Jewish evangelism falls short as a model for today’s membership
standards debates, though it is often used by those interested in liberalizing
denominational positions.
2. As the church spread to the gentiles “belief” became
another matter. When Christianity started spilling over onto the
gentiles10-15 years later, things changed.
Christian missionaries to the gentiles like Paul, Barnabas, Silas and
others faced a whole new set of problems. The first problem was the gentiles
were polytheistic—they believed in many gods.
They were inclined toward add-a-god religion—their gods were
specialized—one for the sea, another for celebrations, and another managed
pregnancies and still others dealt with healing or protection. They figured it never hurt to add a new
specialist-god to your collection. Thus
gentile evangelists could get people to “pray the prayer” fairly easily, but
they soon discovered gentiles were merely adding Jesus into their pantheon of
other gods. That didn’t satisfy Christian (or Jewish) theology. When the
Apostles worked with Jews they did not have to get them to abandon their
God—just accept Jesus as the Messiah and son of this God. However, when the apostles evangelized the
gentiles they had to get them to both unbelieve and believe. They had to get
the gentiles to both confess unbelief in their present Gods and belief in the
One True God. This, of course, is why
the early Christians were considered atheists in the Gentile world. Making members out of the gentiles took
time—to convince them of the uselessness of their Gods and the exclusivist
claims of Christianity. Fixing their beliefs was hard work.
3. But apostles to the gentiles had an even bigger
problem—the gentile’s behavior. Evangelists to the Jews had it easy when it
came to behavior—most Jews already behaved, or at least knew how to
behave. The gentile “dogs” were
different. They were called dogs by the
Jews because they had the morals of a wandering dog, especially relating to
sex. The gentiles visited shrine
prostitutes like people go golfing today—they had little remorse or guilt. Lasciviousness was “normal” and telling a
Corinthian he needed to stop visiting the temple prostitutes to be a Christian
would be similar to telling people today they have to give up golfing to become
a Christian. Evangelism among the Jews
was like converting life-long church attendees at youth camp (with the same
problem too—heard-heartedness). On the
other hand, evangelism among the gentiles was like winning prostitutes off the
streets in Las Vegas. So what did the
apostles to do? If they had followed the
pattern of Jewish evangelism they would have simply preached Christ, invited
people to believe in Him as messiah, baptized them that afternoon, then took
them into the fellowship of the Christians that evening for the common meal. In
fact they did do this among the Jews of the Diaspora and they may
have even been hasty in baptizing gentiles at first (perhaps this is why Paul
goes to great lengths to instruct the Corinthian members that they should quit
going to the prostitutes?) But
eventually the apostles and missionaries to the gentiles had to slow the
process down to filter out the easy believism of add-a-god people and to clean
up the lives of the gentile “dogs” before taking them into the church. So what did they do?
4. The church delayed baptism among the gentiles and
introduced membership training. Since baptism was the entry point into the church it was
withheld until candidates got their beliefs and behavior straightened out. Here was the general procedure about the time
the final books of the New Testament were being written:
All of this was in place before the close of the New
Testament. We are not talking here of what the church did in 200 or
after Constantine in 350, but we are describing what the church did in the
first century –while some of the New testament was still being written.
5.
So what does all this
tell us about the current membership debate? I don’t know—that’s up to you. I’ve done my
job: translating the best scholarship into a readable article for ordinary
church leaders. Now it is your turn to
decide if these things matter. And in
the process you’ll have to determine how much authority you give the early
church practices. There are dozens of positions along a continuum but the
clearest ones are:
a.
The Bible primitivist
position. This position says there is nothing
whatsoever authoritative in the Didache or any other document from the early
church—only the books in the canon can tell us anything. This position assumes we should pattern our
worship, organization, baptism, Lord’s Supper and membership after only what we
clearly see in the New Testament. The
most radical group goes even further saying that nothing should be done that is
not explicitly reported in the New Testament (which is why some
primitivists reuse to have any musical instruments in worship). The bible primitivists usually believe their
present worship and practice is most close to what the actual New Testaments
church did. So the above description
that uses sources of church history is irrelevant to them—only what they read
in the canon has any authority for them. Hard or “radical restorationists” fit
in this position. To them the above
article is meaningless for membership issues for they do not let authority
extend beyond AD 90 [1]
b.
The “soft
restorationist” position.
This position says we should restore as far as possible the practices of the
early church as recorded in the Bible and in the first hundred years or so
before Constantine ruined Christianity.
This group assumes the early church “had it right” or at least had it
best. They would say we ought to call
our elders elders and our deacons deacons and baptize people however they see
it done in the New Testament, mostly in Acts. This group is softer than the
Bible primitivists though for they accept the first hundred years of church
history as also guidance for “the best way to do Church.”
c.
The “That was then, this
is now” position. This position says
that all we need to keep is the theology of the early church and we are free to
“do church” just about any way we want to “serve this present age.” This position is interested in what the early
church did but does not give it more than 10% of the votes—our culture is much
too different today to practice what they did.
This the That-was-then, this-is-now people feel membership decisions are
up to us now based on the theology of the early church, not its practices.
Everyone leans toward one end of this spectrum or the
other. Toward which position do you
tilt? Challenge: craft a single
statement reflecting your own view on this.
Keith Drury
3. “Membership Standards” in
the Didache
What is the Didache?
Like the Dead Sea Scrolls the Didache is an
ancient document rediscovered in modern times (1873). It is a written record of the oral tradition
of the first century Christian house church’s membership training. It is not Scripture, though many in the early
church treated it as such. Actually it
is more like a church discipline or membership-training program. It is an old book—older than some of the
books in the New Testament, and for several hundred years was considered
inspired and authoritative. It almost
made it into the Canon, but (along with the other almost-but-not book, the
epistle of Clement) did not make the final cut.
Why read the Didache?
I first came to study the Didache when searching for
Christian evidence against abortion.
Since there is no explicit condemnation of abortion in the New
Testament I thought it seemed like the early Christians would be against
abortion and sought evidence elsewhere.
I turned to early church documents and found the Didache (2:2) listed
abortion as one of the you-will-not new member instructions (along with murder
and other commandment-like rules). I
again returned to this short book when researching my book on worship to
confirm the early church’s patterns of baptism and communion (chapters 7-10). I
have been studying it again recently since I am now teaching more Christian
Education courses and thus am interested in how the ancient Christian church
did spiritual formation of new members. I’ve been pondering what the first
century church’s “rules” would look like if they were put into today’s
words.
How the Didache was used.
The best scholarship today believes that the Didache was used
in a mentoring approach to membership training (at least the first part: the
“two ways”). There is still disagreement
over weather the rituals and church organization sections at the end was a
separate book or not). The Didache
was recited orally in section by a trainer in stages to a candidate for
baptism/membership which could last as long as two years. While the New Testament gives some details of
church life in the church at Jerusalem the Didache gives a complete description.
Anyone interested in what the early church actually did should be interested in
reading it.
How much authority does the Didache have? There
are plenty of spurious documents the Christian church rejected—including the
Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip used by Dan Brown as sources for The
DaVinci Code. However the Didache
was never rejected by the church who used it regularly and gave it inspired
authority for a time but eventually it slipped to the sort of authority one
might give a denomination’s Discipline or Manual. The Didache is a practical guide for
training new members and includes the actual instructions on the rituals a new
member would take on completion of their preparation—Baptism and their first
communion. (Sorry Baptists—the Didache gives a practical multiple-choice
answer on immersion, though also sorry to the Anglicans—it prefers immersion.
It also prefers cold water to warm and running water to still but we’re getting
off track here—read the text of it to see what you think.) The real question is how much authority does
it have? You will have to make up your
own mind. For me it supplies a glimpse
on what the early church stood for while some parts of the Bible was still
being written. This glimpse is important to me as I try to understand how the
first century “Jesus movement” grew and spread.
However, I am not a primivitist or restorationist. I do not believe “the
way they did it then was best and we should copy their ways.” Many of my readers won’t agree with me on this.
I admit that I did not take this position when I knew less about what the early
church actually did—but the more I’ve studied the Bible, first century culture,
and what the first century church actually did in that day the more I
have come to believe that we today much conserve their theology but are free to
invent our own methodology.[2] So why do I read the Didache at all? Because I like to learn. And knowing what the early church did might lead
me to understand their theology (for all theology is found upstream from our
actions). However if you believe the
early church practice is a model for us today you’ll probably give the Didache
more authority than I do. Either way—it
is fun to know what the early church actually did in membership training. I’m interested in the latest way the
“emerging church” does church, but I’m even a tad bit more interested in how
the first century church did it.
Here is what I did in this article: The Didache has 16 chapters (though some chapters have only
a few verses). My question was: What
if we adapted the early church’s Didache membership training for today’s
church? What if we assigned new
candidates for baptism to an individual “sponsor” or “Membership mentor” and
they trained the new members using the early church’s training program. What sort of member would we be trying to
get? OK…you can do this for yourself—but
I’ve done some of the first heavy lifting for you—but I hope you merely scan my
work then read the Didache on your own and decide for yourself the kind of
Christian the early church was trying to make.
Don’t get sidelined by trying to decide if the Didache has any
authority or not—just treat this as if it were Bill Hybel’s or Rick Warren’s membership
training program for now and as you’re looking over it decide what kind of
spiritual formation they were trying to do with their membership
candidates. Then decide for yourself. I hope I’ve whetted your appetite enough to
seduce you to actually go to the text and read through the Didache once—then
decide for yourself.
(Based on the Didache c.
60-100AD)
as a member you should covenant to…
1.
I will treat my enemies with
love. (1:3-6)
·
Love you enemies
·
Pray for them, fast for
them
·
Turn your other cheek
·
Go the second mile
·
Give generously to
anyone asking of you
2.
I will avoid our list of
DON’Ts (2:1-3:6)
·
Murder
·
Commit adultery
·
Corrupt boys
·
Have illicit sex
·
Steal
·
Practice magic
·
Make potions
·
Abort your offspring
·
Kill a newborn
·
Covet your neighbor’s
things
·
Swear falsely
·
Bear false witness
·
Speak badly of anyone
·
Hold grudges
·
Make empty promises
·
Covetousness
·
Greed
·
Hypocracy
·
Bad-manners
·
Arrogance
·
Hating any person
·
Anger
·
Envy
·
Contentiousness
·
Hot-headed
·
Lustful
·
Divining, enchanting,
astrology
·
Lover of money, seeker
of glory
·
Self-pleasing,
evil-minded
3.
I will practice our
lists of DO’s (3:7-4:14)
·
I will be gentle
·
Be merciful, harmless,
calm & good
·
(Not be self-exalting)
·
Accept all experiences
as from God
·
Remember constantly my
mentor & other saints in the church
·
(Not cause dissention but reconcile those
fighting)
·
Ignore social status in
correcting others
·
Focus on giving more
then getting
·
Cheerfully give without
grumbling to those in need
·
Be active in training my
children
·
Treat my slaves rightly;
(slaves should be subject to masters)
·
Hate hypocrisy
·
I will give to those in
need
·
Keep these rules adding
nothing or taking nothing away
·
Confess my failings in
church
B I WILL AVOID THE
“WAY OF DEATH”
I will reject the “Way of death” as represented by the
following (5:1-2)
·
Murders
·
Adulteries
·
Lusts
·
Illicit sex acts
·
Thefts
·
Idolatries
·
Magic
·
Potions
·
Sorceries
·
Perjuries
·
Hypocrisies
·
Double-heartedness
·
Trickery
·
Arrogance
·
Malice
·
Self-pleasing
·
Greed
·
Foul-speech
·
Jealousy
·
Audacity
·
Haughtiness
·
False-pretension
·
Hating truth/loving lies
·
Paying unjust wages
·
Not helping the poor
·
Murdering children
·
Turning away the needy
·
Advocating for the rich
·
Loving frivolous things
·
Insisting on recompense
for everything
C CONCLUSION
After learning the “Two ways” I make these final commitments. (5:1-6:3)
·
I will be wary of anyone
drawing me away from this teaching.
·
As I am able to live all
of this teaching I shall do it; but until I am able to bear some of it I shall
bear whatever load I can for now yet keep my goal of carrying the entire load.
·
I will do my best to
follow the traditions regarding eating food however I understand that eating anything
sacrificed to idols is non-negotiable and I will abstain from it.
This ends the “Two ways” membership mentoring materials in
the Didache though it continues to describe the means of baptism (7:1-4)
fasting and prayers (8:1-3) the Eucharist (9:1-10:7) and various instructions
on church management (11:1-16:8). There
are wonderful glimpses into the early church practices in these chapters but
they do not outline the core elements of membership instruction like the first
six chapters.
So, what do you think? How would you describe this “membership
training” material if you got it in the mail?
v
What did the early church focus on mostly?
v
What did they leave out?
v
What sort of Christian behavior were they trying to get?
v
What were the “hot issues” of the day they addressed?
v
What “hot issues” of today are completely absent?
v
How much do you think they actually compromised? Where’s the hint?
v
What would people today say if you introduced this sort of membership
approach?
v
How would a 1-2-1 “membership mentor” training program differ from group
training?
v
(Hard one) In what way is this system like other membership systems in
first century culture?
Click here for a full text of the Didache … I hope you’ll read
it and decide for yourself
By Keith Drury
4. Do we get our membership rules
from the Bible?
Where do we get our “rules” for
membership? The obvious answer is “The
Bible, of course.” In fact most denominations claim they take their membership
standards directly from the Bible. “The Bible says so” is the church’s equivalent
of the parental, “Because I said so.”
Many churches like to claim, “our membership standards are
right from the Bible—we forbid only what the Bible forbids and require only
what the Bible requires.” It is the common answer. And it works for
most folk—people nod and seem satisfied. “The Bible says it, and
that’s good enough for me.”
The short and easy answer is good enough for most folk, but
not all—especially thinking people, and people who know their Bible well.
(like the people who read this column.)
So I am about to expose one of the myths of the church that
still works for many folk. I am about to
remind us why churches who say, “Our membership standards are right
from the Bible—we forbid only what the Bible forbids and require only what the
Bible requires” have more to explain
than their quick answers suggest.
Here is why churches don’t really simply get their membership
rules directly form the Bible:
1. The Bible has far too many do’s and don’t’s.
If we seriously attempted to use the Bible as the basis of
membership standards we’d have a thousand requirements and nobody would keep
them all. If there were only ten commandments it would be easy—we’d have
ten standards of membership. But the Bible is packed with dos and don’ts
(in spite of what we tell seekers on the contrary). Lets say there are a
thousand attitudes and actions the Bible urges or forbids (there are more, but
let’s just say there are only a thousand). What denomination could have a
thousand “membership commitments?” Or even a hundred? And if we did
who would live up to them all?
So when we claim that our denomination “simply uses the Bible
as its source for membership requirements” we really mean we’ve sifted through
a thousand things and selected some as our standards. Perhaps we
might narrow the thousand down to two (as Jesus did) but most denominations
don’t do that even. Why? Because His two commandments weren’t rules at
all but principles which allow for such broad subjective interpretations
that one can drive all kinds of behaviors through the loopholes. So most denominations pick and choose from
the Bible’s many commands and put some in their membership standards. (The process of selecting some rules as
membership expectations while ignoring others is interesting, but we’ll deal
with that in another essay.) The truth
is churches select only some of the Bible’s many commands for their membership
requirements—there are simply too many rules in the Bible to make them all into
membership commitments.
2. There are things the Bible allows we want to forbid.
The second problem with claiming the Bible as the sole source
of our membership standards is there are sins the Bible does not address yet
we’re sure they’re sin. Face it, the Bible did not explicitly
address every sin that would ever come along. Sure, the Bible lays down
principles and values that we can apply to new situations and label things as
“new sins.” But if we limit ourselves to listing in our membership
commitments only those things the Bible explicitly forbids, we’ll be silent on
a long list of things most of us believe need condemning.
Take abortion for instance. Most all Christians
I know—including liberal ones—think abortion is wrong, many think it is
murder. Who says? Show us a verse. To prove abortion wrong we
are required to go to verses not directly about abortion in order to argue “the
fetus is life or God wouldn’t have plans for it” or, “A fetus couldn’t be
filled with the Spirit if it isn’t a person.” These arguments are only
persuasive to the already-persuaded. They are proof texts for the
convinced. The truth is, abortion was practiced in the ancient world (as
was child-exposure—a kind of post-birth abortion: putting a new baby in a field
and “letting its destiny be up to God”).
Yet the Bible is silent on both of these practices. (However, as pointed
out in another article on membership, the didache does condemn both
practices—just not the Canonized Scriptures.) My point is we in the
church have grave reservations about abortion and most of us believe it is the
taking of a human life. So some churches, like mine, want their members
to abstain from abortion. We want to prohibit it even though the Bible
does not explicitly forbid it. So we’ve added it to our list of sins—and
we consider it a serious one at that—but we’ve done so without explicit verses
on abortion—we interpret verses and values to determine abortion is sin.
I used abortion above as an example but I could just as
easily picked other “sins” we condemn that are not explicitly forbidden by the
Bible. What about slavery? In the early 1800s Southern
slave-holding Methodists used the Bible to point out that slave-holding was at
least tacitly approved by Scripture. Abolitionists (including the founders of
my own denomination) took the same Bible and said the whole tenor of Scripture
implied freedom for all men making slavery sin
even though there were verses that seemed to approve it. The Southern
slave-holders were of course right—the Bible does not forbid slave-holding for
Christians, in fact advises them on proper treatment of their slaves. Yet
1900 years later almost every Christian in the world has come to believe
slavery needed to be added to the Bible’ list of sins. My denomination
refused to let slave-holders join the church: it was a “membership
requirement.” But we didn’t get it from
the Bible explicitly. We added it.
How about pornography? The Bible nowhere explicitly
forbids pornography—it is not even mentioned. Yet what sensible Christian
today would not say that pornography is clearly a “sin” and not merely a matter
of “private convictions?” So we’ve added this to our list of sins.
How about drugs? The Bible nowhere explicitly
condemns drugs (other than mentioning alcohol and that is even with tacit
approval like the Bible deals with slavery). Most American denominations born
near the prohibition/women’s rights movement of the 19th century has
a heritage of “total abstinence” that condemned alcohol as sin. While the
final holdouts on total abstinence are still holding onto their position, it is
eroding among evangelicals. Yet most
denominations continue to condemn as sin all other drugs, even marijuana (which
might be considerably less serious than alcohol is used moderately). To condemn
drugs we say something like, “the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit…” as
our Biblical argument but that’s an interpretation of verses about
something totally different—it is an implicit interpretation.) So some of us
consider alcohol use sin, and most all evangelicals consider using drugs a
sin. Need I mention gambling, pre-marital
oral sex, or a dozen other social and individual evils that all
thinking Christians now consider “sin” though they can’t quote a verse that
explicitly condemns these things?
So, we may claim “we get our membership rules from Scripture”
but we are really interpreting Scripture when we label “sin” some things
that the Bible does not explicitly condemn. I think denominations should
do this (even if the Bible isn’t absolutely clear on the matter) but when we do
it we need to be honest and not claim the Bible “as our only source for church
rules.”
I realize that I am announcing the king is clothesless. Some
denominational leaders and pastors will cover their ears and mutter loudly to
cover up the message of this article. Some leaders like the easy
authority of the Bible to subdue their member’s resistance to rule—they like
the, “It’s in the Bible stupid” power. They’d have a harder time convincing
people using reason, tradition, or experience. So they keep pretending
their church’s rule “are derived from
clear Bible teaching.” And it works—at least for most of the people
most of time. But there are some thinking Christians (like you and me)
who know better. They know there are
sins that the Bible never mentions explicitly and they believe that we should
be honest and seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance in finding and exposing even sins
the Bible fails to mention explicitly—or even sins the Bible seems to allow
for!
3. There are things the Bible forbids we want to allow.
Even if you came with me this far, some of you will get off
the bus at this point. You won’t like
this. It is the hardest truth of
all. Conservatives will reject this thought at every sentence of the
following paragraphs. No matter how convincing and lucid I write I expect
conservatives will remain unconvinced.
But it is still true, even if you reject it.
Most conservatives believe, “once a sin always a sin.”
They believe that whatever the Bible calls sin will always be sin
forever—that’s that. They reject the notion that something can be
condemned or required in the Bible and later become acceptable. Again, I
admire their high esteem for the Bible, I have such an esteem too but disagree
with their conclusions. But they will
only be able to convince “most of the people most of the time” —the rest of us
know it simply isn’t true—the Bible condemns things we now allow.
Lets
start with the easy ones—the codes in Leviticus. Isn’t it obvious
that we no longer are required to observe the Bible’s eating codes? We
practice good “hermeneutics” and pronounce these sections no longer applying
(though most of us try to preserve in some way the sections regarding
homosexual acts from this code). Most of us accept the fact that parts of
the Bible’s sins no longer apply. For
some it is ONLY the codes in Leviticus, but they have already accepted the
principle—the Bible commands do not all apply to today.
Leviticus is an easy one; let’s try another. What of Christ’s
clear teaching forbidding “piling up treasure on earth.” There is
no need to “interpret” anything here—this teaching is explicit… as John Wesley
said, “The same God who said do not steal, and do not commit adultery said do
not pile up treasures on earth.” Yet who would not agree that we now
believe increasing one’s net worth is not really disobedience to God’s
commands. In fact, most American Christians versed in modern economics
might actually say that gaining wealth is good for the economy and maybe even
good for the poor. Most modern Christians believe that the self-enforced
poverty of Jesus, the Disciples and people like John Wesley might have been OK
for them, but certainly is not required of everyone. What once was a
clear commandment of Christ we’ve made optional. We have “interpreted”
Scripture, changing its meaning from “do not pile up” to now mean “Do not be
attached to material things as you pile them up.” The point here is that we
have decided to allow increasing one’s possessions against the original command
of Christ—we have “loosed” this former commandment.
Let’s do one more—divorce. Is there much doubt
about the explicit teaching of Jesus on divorce? His command was
clear. Yet in our modern world most denominations have come to
reluctantly allow divorce on some grounds beyond the narrow list of
Jesus. We have not come to approve divorce or treat it lightly, but we
have come to allow it—among church members, even board members and
ministers. We have “loosed” the extremely high standard of marriage
taught by Jesus. Tell me—which denomination expels members “going through
a divorce” for extra-biblical reasons? There are some that will put a minister
in a penalty box for such a divorce, but “one man + one woman for one life” is
an “ideal” for most evangelicals, not a “entry requirement.”
The truth is this: membership rules aren’t directly from the
Bible—they are “Bible based.”
We might claim, “Our denomination’s membership rules simply
come directly from the Bible” but actually
we should say they are “bible based.” We’ve used the Bible in
deciding what the minimum entry requirements are. We haven’t use the whole Bible, we picked and
chose and selected some things. Then we
added some sins –we “bound”—sins not explicitly condemned in the Bible but we
believe they are sin. Finally we dropped some things the Bible
clearly commands, “loosing” our people from their obligation. Finally, we sifted all these and decided
which should be in the list as the “minimum entry requirements” and assigned
the rest to be an ideal to pursue not a minimum used to exclude.
This is how we have made our “Membership standards,” “General
Rules,” “Membership commitments” or whatever your church calls them. (Actually we
didn’t do this at all—preceding generations did it for us, but that is another
topic for later treatment.) Every denomination has such “rules” in one
form or another. Some have “high standards” for membership (like Bill
Hybels’ Willow Creek Church where membership is essentially leadership).
Others have a two-tier system, making entry into membership easy but a higher
standard for leadership. Still other churches have practically no
membership standards at all[3]
So here is my question to you:
Who gave the church the right to decide which sins we will
“bind” and which we will “loose” from what Jesus and the Bible originally
taught?
This is the subject of my next essay.
January, 2005 Keith Drury
5. Who gave the church the right to decide which sins we will
“bind” and which we will “loose” from what Jesus and the Bible originally
taught?
There is no doubt we have added to the Bible’s list of
sins. No denomination can honestly say
they simply “use the clear teaching of the Bible to decide what is sin or
not.” We all have added sins not
explicitly condemned in the Bible—things like abortion, pornography,
slave-holding, or using drugs. In a
sense you could say we have “bound them” on our people though the Bible does
not explicitly mention them. But we also
have dismissed some of the Bible’s explicit teaching on sin—for example the
codes in Leviticus, or Jesus’ teaching on piling up treasure on earth, or even
on divorce—you might say we have “loosed” these requirements of the Bible. The title of this section is my question: Who
gave the church the right to decide which sins we will “bind” and which we will
“loose” from what Jesus and the Bible originally taught?
The answer
is simple: Jesus did. That’s it. Pure and simple. Jesus gave the church the power to decide
what to bind and loose on earth. We Protestants hate to hear this. We scream, NO NO NO, go away, I won’t listen
…that’s too Catholic to be true—I reject it out of hand. But it is true. Let’s just do a bit of Bible study. (Can you do this on the explicit teaching of
the Bible and not read preferred “interpretations” into the clear words Jesus
spoke?)
Matthew 16:19
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Peter had
just confessed Jesus as the Messiah.
Jesus said “I will give you the keys to the kingdom.” So ask
yourself—who got the keys? Who is “you”
in this passage? Is it Peter
personally? (If you say this then
you might consider a transfer to the Catholic Church and get in under the line
of Peter) OK most Protestants say it wasn’t Peter personally who got the
keys—then who was it? Was it the collective
group of apostles present? (If you
say yes then you might also consider a transfer to the Catholic Church and get
under the apostolic umbrella). If not
Peter personally, or the apostles, then who got the keys? I say Jesus gave the church the keys—the
collective body of Christ on earth through the ages got the keys to the
koingdom form Jesus. The body of Christ is the heir to the keys of Jesus.
So what are
the keys for? Gee we can go
all kinds of esoteric places here if we just use our imagination. But why go anywhere except where Jesus went
in the second half of the verse? "..whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound on heaven." Bind and loose were rabbinical terms for
ruling certain actions as either forbidden or permitted. So the terms were spoken in context suggest
determining what is forbidden and what is permitted. It implies the church has the keys to determine
what will be bound on people and what will be loosed. Whoa! Help!
We must be interpreting this wrongly, right? How can the church have the power to
decide what things are now sin that used to be OK and what things used to be
sin that are now OK? We admit we
actually do this (as the previous section outlined) but did Jesus actually
authorize it? Lets’ go study some other
passage of Scripture—this Matthew 16 passage is too much to bear!
2. Matthew 18:18
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven.
Whoops…
Matthew 16:19 isn’t just an isolated verse.
Matthew repeats the phrase several chapters later as Jesus taught us how
to deal with a brother who has refused to reconcile even after the three-step
process. Jesus said such a brother is to be shunned or "treated as a
publican." Then he added, "whatever you bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven." What in the dickens does this mean? Does God somehow recognize in heaven our own
shunning or our excommunication of people on earth? Does Jesus actually delegate His power to decide
matters that heaven “follows?” Delegate it to the church? NO! Never!
It cannot be! Sure, we act like
He did, but we don’t want to confess we actually believe we have this authority
do we? OK maybe there is an out
here. Perhaps Matthew had some sort of
hang-up or spin that is his alone and we can dismiss it. A couple of verses in Matthew does not a
theology make. Lets’ look somewhere else
in our Bible study.
3. John 20:22-23
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whosoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Oh boy—this
doesn’t help! It only gets worse in
John! It is more explicit not less. John places Jesus' words at the post
resurrection appearance in the upper room following their receiving the Holy
Spirit (the time before Acts 2) Jesus told His church gathered there "If
you loose the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you bind the sins of any, they
are retained." HOLY SMOKE!
Help! We must interpret our way
out of this mess! It can’t mean what it
says can it? We need to make these
verses mean something besides what they clearly say! Jesus’ words are clearly about sins here, not
just binding or loosing the regulations of the Old Testament as we Protestants
might be able to interpret the Jewish Matthew passages. John has Jesus saying that we have His
delegated authority to forgive sins ore to retain them. WOAH!
How in the dickens do we do this?
Remit sins? How do we forgive
sins? How (as a church) do we make sins
“stick” to people? Does God actually
recognize this authority and make it so in heaven because we’ve done it
here? Can the church have such
power? We can’t take it!
Here’s what these verses seem to be
saying to me:
1. Jesus gave
the church “keys to the kingdom.”
2. These keys
are about “binding and loosing” on earth.
3. Whatever
the church binds on earth gets bound in heaven.
4. Whatever
the church looses on earth, gets loosed in heaven
5. When the
church remits sins on earth they are remitted in heaven
6. When the church
retains sins on earth they are retained in heaven
Can it
be? Can God be such a delegator? If so the church must be far more important
than we all think it is. We prefer a powerful individual and a weak church but
the church may be far more important than we think it is.
So, what does this all have to do
with Church Membership?
As to
membership I think all this says the church has Christ’s delegated power to
make membership decisions for sure since it already has far more power than
this small power. We can bind people
with things the Bible never mentions and we can loose things the Bible once
commanded. Is this a dangerous
position? You better believe it is! It seems to make the church “trump” the
bible. But curiously, it is the biblical
position!
But we must remember it was the
church who decided on the Bible
Where did
we get the Bible from? The church. Why aren’t the DaVinci Cod’s favorites, the Gospel of
Mary and the Gospel of Philip in our canon? How did Revelation, Hebrews and
some of the Pastoral epistles get into the Canon even though some in the church
thought they shouldn’t get in? Who
decided what would make the cut and become canonized? Who decided what would be
considered spurious? Easy answer—we all
know but try to forget this truth. The
church decided what our Bible would be. So, even when we say “the Bible
alone” we are actually trusting the church.
Over several hundred years the church decided which of the hundred plus
“books” would go into the New Testament and which would be denied. Talk about binding and loosing! How do we know the church made the right
decisions? Do you think they made any
mistakes? Should Clement I or the Didache have gotten into the
canon and they goofed? Did they make a
mistake by eliminating the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary? The answer most of us give is, “No.” How can we say this? Because we believe the Holy Spirit
actively guided the collective group of Christians to figure it out. We believe the Holy Spirit guided the debate
and when the actual eventual church conference made their decision the Holy
Spirit actively “guarded and guided” and they made the right decision.
So why would we think the Holy
Spirit stopped working this way after a few hundred years? We don’t.
At least not when we think about it.
Of course the Holy Spirit still works in His church to “guard and guide”
the church. That’s why we pray for His
guidance at conferences and conventions where important decisions are
made. Indeed all decision making by the
church is what we call “seeking God’s will.”
I think all this applies to
decisions about membership requirements. Not that these matters are
as important as the canonization of Scripture.
They aren’t. In fact they are far less important than retaining or
forgiving sins which is what these verses talk about. Few of us would say that
denying church membership to an individual damns that person. Membership standards are little matters next
to Canonization and sin-retention matters.
Yet it is our job as a church to decide membership matters. Won’t the Holy Spirit guide us in this
process? Certainly! If we ask for guidance. At least it is not as important a task as it
used to be. After all, when there was
only one worldwide church—not meeting “membership requirements” meant you were
outside of any and all churches. Today
you can go down the road and get into a church even if you don’t meet our
membership standards. And most evangelicals believe a person might even go to
heaven if he or she belonged to no church whatsoever if individually they had saving faith. So the decision about church membership is a
lower-risk decision. But we must make
it. And re-make it in every generation.
So if the church has the power to
determine these matters what is the key insight we’re often missing? Is it not about the “presenting symptoms”
–alcohol, tobacco, gambling, drugs, divorce, homosexual acts in my
opinion. We will have enough “spiritual
sense” to make these decisions rightly.
But we won’t be able to do it if our categories aren’t
clear. I think (at least in my own
denomination) we must examine the categories before we move on to talk about
specific Beliefs and behaviors.”
So, this will be the subject of my next writing
on membership.
January 11, 2005
Keith Drury
Membership standards:
I don’t know about your denomination but when it comes to
membership requirements my own denomination is confuses its categories. Many denominations
lump everything from promising to fast all the way to avoiding committing
adultery into one big bucket of membership standards and expect people to sort
between the actually required ones and the optional ones. At least my
denomination has “two buckets”—one that full of required stuff and the other
that are “admonitions” to its members.
That’s a start but there are more than two categories when it comes to
membership rules. Most of these other
categories are unwritten ones. Here are
some I’ve noted:
There are probably other categories of rules I’m missing but
I think I’ve made my point. The church’s rule bucket often does not
distinguish between the categories. This
creates confusion among the candidates for membership and the churches. They don’t know which ones fit in which
category If one pastor can wink-wink her way past the gambling/lottery tickets
why can’t another pastor wink-wink past homosexual behavior? Who guides us in know what these unwritten
categories are?
To make it more confusing, these rules are moving targets. No denomination has a
fixed and firm set of rules. Rules are
always a moving target. The masses of
people and pastors are always making informal interpretations of these
rules. A few stay firm but most are
loosed informally while new rules are added (like my denomination’s stance on
abortion or against spouse and child abuse).
“Trafficking in alcohol” in my denomination used to mean a member wasn’t
supposed to be a check-out clerk at Wal-Mart if ringing up wine was involved,
or to drive a beer-delivery truck. Now
it might mean to not start your own brewery for profit, if anything at all. The point is these rules are moving targets
and that make it all even more confusing.
Take my denomination for instance. My denomination has 36 rules for its full members.
One of those “rules” has to do with observing the Lord’s day. That used to mean not going to a restaurant
or playing ball or even buying a newspaper on Sunday. Over the years that meaning has gravitated by
popular interpretation to mean “honor Sunday in whatever way you personally
feel honors Sunday.” That is, the rule
no longer means what it meant; or means anything at all actually. It is a
useless rule. But try to get rid of it
and see what the people say. They’ll
rend their garments and toss dust into the air for your desire to defile a day
of rest and worship. Yet these folk are
like those people in your church who insist on a Sunday evening service yet
never come themselves. It is all
breast-beating posturing. Useless rules
are confusing. My denomination has a
half-bucketful of such rules in all kinds of categories.
Which is why denominations ought to re-mint their membership
commitments every few decades.
Maybe even more often. I wish my
denomination would. Here’s what I think
my denomination ought to do every 20 years:
So, don’t I worry about opening up our rules to
reconsideration? Not at all.
I think the Holy Spirit will guide the church in binding and loosing
things just like he did in guiding the church in the first few hundred years of
Christian history to select which books would go into the Bible and which would
get left out. But of course there’s a
hitch. We must seriously try to find
God’s will when we make these decisions.
I don’t believe “God always gets his way” in church decisions—I’m a
free-will Wesleyan, remember. But I do
believe that when the church gathers to make decisions the Holy Spirit will
guide and direct that church if they seek it—and generally speaking God will
guide is through the Holy Spirit to make the right decisions so that even in
our membership standards we can “serve this present age.”
Keith Drury
If
you were king what would you do?
Here is a fun game for
Wesleyans. Print
out this table then check the boxes to show what you’d do with each of the 36
possible “rules” for “Covenant members” in your church if you had the power to
make the decision (or if you do this as a church staff what you’d agree on as a
staff). The game is more than a game
actually. Do it—you’ll be better after
thinking this though.
MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENTS I’D HAVE FOR COVENANT
MEMBERS
|
Thirty
six possible “Membership Commitments” for “Covenant members” of The Wesleyan
Church—check the box to right reflecting
your opinion for that possible rule. |
REQUIRED for joining as a minimum standard or you can’t join
the church, |
EXPECTED of
members but won’t get you kicked out
once you are a member. |
IDEALS we
expect of all Christians but shouldn’t clutter the membership commitments
with. |
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1.
Honor God’s name. |
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2.
Honor the Lord’s day by going to church |
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3.
Honor the Lord’s day by avoiding detracting activities. |
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4.
Total abstinence from the occult, witchcraft, & astrology. |
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5.
Give to the church remembering the idea of tithing. |
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6.
Give to the needy. |
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7.
Total abstinence from gambling. |
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8.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of tobacco. |
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9.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of alcohol. |
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10.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of non-prescription drugs. |
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11.
Total abstinence from joining secret societies. |
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12.
Total abstinence from sex outside of marriage. |
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13.
Refusal to divorce except for adultery, homosexual behavior, bestiality or
incest. |
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14.
Total abstinence from child abuse. |
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15.
Total abstinence from spouse abuse. |
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16.
Live peacefully with others at home. |
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17.
Nurture children in the home in order to bring them early to Christ. |
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18.
Work together with others at church. |
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19.
Walk in Christian fellowship with other Christians with gentleness and
affection. |
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20.
Pray for others at church. |
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21.
Help others at church in sickness and distress. |
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22.
Demonstrate love, purity and courtesy to everyone. |
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23.
Attend public worship. |
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24.
Participate in the Lord’s supper |
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25.
Have family devotions. |
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26.
Have personal devotions. |
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27.
Practice fasting. |
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28.
Refusal to teach that tongues is a sign of baptism of Holy Ghost. |
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29.
Refraining from speaking in tongues in public worship |
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30.
Total abstinence from promoting a private prayer language of tongues. |
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31.
Give food to hungry people. |
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32.
Give clothing to the destitute. |
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33.
Visit people who are sick. |
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34.
Visit people in prison. |
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35.
Respect individual rights regardless of race, color or sex. |
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36.
Be honest and just in all of life’s dealings. |
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My
new one: |
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My
new one: |
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My
new one: |
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My
new one: |
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My
new one: |
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My
new one: |
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When you are finished look at
The Discipline and see how your list
compares to the existing list found in paragraph 265(1-12).
What did you discover? To
comment click here.
Keith Drury
Summary of the
“rules” of my denomination (The
Wesleyan Church)
(Click here for the full
original wording used to summarize
into this list)
The 36 MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENTS
(“Covenant Members are expected to commit to these)
1.
Honor God’s name.
2.
Honor the Lord’s day by going to church .
3.
Honor the Lord’s day by avoiding detracting activities.
4.
Total abstinence from the occult, witchcraft, &
astrology.
5.
Give to the church (“remembering” the idea of tithing).
6.
Give to the needy.
7.
Total abstinence from gambling.
8.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of
tobacco.
9.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of
alcohol.
10.
Total abstinence from production, sale or purchase of
non-prescription drugs.
11.
Total abstinence from joining secret societies.
12.
Total abstinence from sex outside of marriage.
13.
Total abstinence from divorce for any reason other than
adultery, homosexual behavior, bestiality or incest.
14.
Total abstinence from child abuse.
15.
Total abstinence from spouse abuse.
16.
Live peacefully with others at home.
17.
Nurture children in the home in order to bring them early
to Christ.
18.
Work together with others at church.
19.
Walk in Christian fellowship with other Christians at
church with gentleness and affection.
20.
Pray for others at church.
21.
Help others at church in sickness and distress.
22.
Demonstrate love, purity and courtesy to everyone.
23.
Attend public worship.
24.
Participate in the Lord’s supper
25.
Have family devotions.
26.
Have personal devotions.
27.
Practice fasting.
28.
Total abstinence from teaching that tongues is a sign of
baptism of Holy Ghost.
29.
Total abstinence from speaking in tongues in public
worship
30.
Total abstinence from promoting a private prayer language
of tongues.
31.
Give food to hungry people.
32.
Give clothing to the destitute.
33.
Visit people who are sick.
34.
Visit people in prison.
35.
Respect individual rights regardless of race, color or
sex.
36.
Be honest and just in all of life’s dealings.
SPECIAL DIRECTIONS
(Admonitions to members but not
commitments)
1.
Equal rights.
We believe there should be equal rights and opportunities for all
individuals politically, economically and religiously.
2.
Peace. We take all legitimate means to avoid war & every
means to seek peace.
3.
Military Service. If a member thinks military Service
is contrary to the teaching of the New Testament we will support that person.
4.
Substance Abuse. We’re opposed to production, sale,
purchase and use of alcoholic beverages, tobacco, narcotics and other harmful
drugs.
5. Human Sexuality. We support
chastity and purity and vigorously oppose sexual promiscuity. Sex is for enjoyment and procreation in a
marriage. Homosexual practice is sinful
but we believe God can deliver a person form the practice and the inclination.
6.
Divorce and Remarriage. We accept divorce on Scriptural grounds but
once a person is divorced no marriage remains and it is not the unpardonable
sin.
7.
Merchandising on the Lord's Day. We think
merchandising on the Lord's Day should be illegal
8.
Religion in Public Life. We believe prayer in
government activities or in schools should be permitted.
9.
Public School Activities. We don’t think schools should
be teaching dancing and maintin the rights of our members to seek exemption.
10.
Judicial Oaths. We reserve the right for our members
to refuse to “swear” in court but rather “affirm.”
11.
Abortion. We oppose abortion except in rare
pregnancies where the life of the mother is threatened but even then only after
prayerful counsel. We encourage our people to get involved in the anti-abortion
movement.
12.
Use of Leisure Time.
We are carefully regulate what we read, listen to and watch on TV,
refuse to participate in social dancing or go to the movies that feature the
cheap, the violent or the sensual and pornographic. We also refuse to engage in playing games
which tend to be addictive or conducive to gambling.
13.
Modesty in Attire. We urge our people to dress modestly.
Summary by Keith Drury
What
if we wrote our membership commitments from scratch?
I’ve been writing on membership for the last two
months and I’m getting bored with the topic. It is time for an exit
strategy. Here’s a good one: I’ll write
up what I think we’d produce if we made a new list of membership standards for
today if we started with blank paper with no Disciplines in hand. If we locked all the stakeholders in my
denomination in a room (without their Disciplines) what might they come
up with? Here’s my stab at it:
|
Category one: Minimum Membership
Requirements (Minimum
requirements to get in and stay in) |
Category two: Expectations and Admonitions (What
we’ll teach & we expect from all leaders) |
|
Description: Our “Minimum
Membership Requirements are the entry-level requirements for membership. While the normal Christian life expects far
more than such a minimal list, these are the bare minimum requirements for
joining our church. If a candidate for
membership does not meet these requirements they will be nurtured toward
reaching the minimum requirements before being received into membership. If an existing member falls below the
minimum requirements they should expect to be confronted and expelled unless
immediate repentance and change of behavior occurs. |
Description: Our “Expectations and
admonitions” represent the “collective convictions” of our church. This list is how our church collectively speaks
to ourselves urging our members toward becoming a fully devoted follower of
Jesus Christ. As an attendee of our
churches you can expect this lifestyle to be urged in preaching and teaching
in our church. While we do not expel
members who fall short of these standards we do not treat them casually and we expect them as the norm for
our leaders and teachers. Our discipleship efforts in the church are
geared toward helping people have both right beliefs and right
behaviors. These expectations and admonitions
exemplify the sort of behavior we aim toward encouraging you toward—thus in
joining our church you should accept that these expectations represent the
kind of lifestyle your growth in grace should take you toward. |
|
1.
Grace—I have experienced God’s saving grace in conversion and have
obeyed the command to receive water baptism and this grace has cleansed my
life of such sins as murder, sexual impropriety, witchcraft, the occult, and
heresy. |
1. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
totally abstain from receiving, performing or aiding in the performance of abortions
except in the case of endangerment to the life of the mother—and only then
after prayerful counsel. |
2. Growth—I am growing spiritually
personally and see evidence of God’s sanctifying work in gradually making me
more like Christ.
|
2. We
believe committed Christian members of our church should totally abstain from
the production, personal profit from the sale of or personal use of beverage alcohol
or tobacco and we are committed to help those addicted to such use
to become totally released. |
|
3.
Group—I regularly attend worship, and receive the sacrament of
communion and I also participate in some smaller group of believers where I am
known relationally who provide encouragement, support and accountability. |
3. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
totally abstain from gambling and other addictions that are poor stewardship
and we even believe that small stakes gambling in lotteries and even
small stakes games could be a gateway to larger and more serious gambling
addictions and thus we encourage our members to resist even these more
moderate involvements in gambling. |
4. Gifts—I have discovered my spiritual
gifts, abilities and talents and am involved in at least one active means of
service in this church where I use my abilities to build others up in the
body of Christ.
|
4. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
resist any secret society that requires an oath that takes precedence
over the loyalty to Christ and the Church. |
|
5.
Giving—I am a regular giver to this church and to other kingdom
ministries including the needy remembering the principle of the “tithe” that is
the historic standard for giving. |
5. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
uphold the sacred role of traditional marriage for life and thus
should never personally initiate a divorce except in the case of adultery,
homosexual behavior, bestiality or incest, and even than only after prayerful
counsel. |
|
|
6.
We believe committed
Christian members of our church will respect individual rights
regardless of race, color or sex. |
|
|
7. We believe committed Christian members of our church should
work in harmony with others, seeking peace, walking in Christian
fellowship with all other Christians treating them with gentleness and
affection while avoiding division, strife and malice toward any. |
|
|
8. We
believe committed Christian members of our church should practice compassion
by helping others in distress, giving to the needy, providing food for the
hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned and generously giving to support
missionaries and aid programs for the needy in our world. |
That’s what
I think they’d come up with. If we locked
all the “big guys” in a room they’d come up with something not too far off from
what I’ve outlined above I bet. Especially
if there were a lot of pastors in the group.
However, starting from blank paper is a dangerous thing to do. When you do all you get is a “snapshot” of
whatever is the current position on everything.
The church simply puts into law whatever “everyone in their right mind
believes.”
That’s how
we got the list we now have.
Don’t think for a minute that when the church wrote down rules about
alcohol or tobacco or gambling or even buying things on Sunday--that anyone had
to change. Not at all! When the church “took a snapshot” in those
days, EVERY Christian felt this
way—100%. Since nobody in the whole
church drank alcohol, or gambled, or bought on Sunday they simply wrote it
down—it cost nobody anything—they merely took a snapshot of how everyone
already lived. Hey, before 1950 hardly
anybody bought on Sunday—even non-Christians!.
Most of our (serious) church rules came from serious social movements in
the country.
When
the powerful prohibition movement swept the country Christians had to take
sides—now which side do you think they’d take?
Of course they joined the not-a-drop side and it became practice and
church law. Same for the “Blue Laws”
movement, and the anti-Masonic movement.
Not that these movements had no church folk—they did, but when they got
extreme they forced church organizations to make strong statements. These were not primarily church sponsored
movements though. They were gigantic
social movements that the church got caught up in. And like all social movements they tended
toward the extreme. “Temperance” which
in its very name might have indicated “moderation” came to me being a
tee-totaler. There was no room for
discussion—you were either for booze or against it. We didn’t like the boozers so where could we
go? We joined the total abstinence crowd
and wrote it into our documents. As for
tobacco my denomination ignored it for years until the anti-tobacco forces
forced us to declare ourselves. (There may still be some North Carolina tobacco
farmers in my church who were grandfathered in and allowed to keep growing
their weed.) The point—taking snapshots
using blank paper is why we have rules today that seem out of date.
And, what
about today’s social movements.
The church is caught up in great social movements today too. The fact
that few people even blinked when I wrote a statement above calling for total
abstinence from performing or having an abortion show how we’ve all come to
accept this today even though it is more strict than our present Discipline. The anti-abortion movement has radicalized
and insists even that a 1 hour old fertilized egg is truly human life—and we
have gone along—after all, we don’t want to be put over there with Ted Kennedy
and the liberals. As for homosexuality
I have no doubt that we could get a statement on paper today pounding them into
the ground just like they did “divorcees” in 1950. When we say “Well, everybody
knows this is wrong” we forget is this is precisely how sure our grandfathers
felt when they wrote down rules about alcohol, Sunday sales and even things
like television and jewelry at one point in our history. We think their rules are silly and our rules
are “obvious.” But, of course their rules
were just as obvious to them in those days.
If we’re
going to change the church standards we’d better be humble about it. What we write down today our grandchildren
will some day consider us chuckleheads for demanding. We will be the legalists. I
know you refuse to believe it. You say, “But
it can’t go any further—we now have clear Bible support.” But you forget that there is clearer Bible
support against wearing jewelry than against abortion. Is abortion wrong. You bet!
But claiming “it is obviously condemned in the Bible” won’t cut is 50
years from now when your grandchildren want to re-mint the rules for their
generation. Whatever we ban may be
“obvious to every Christian we know” but it will not be so obvious to our
grandchildren. They will get out our
list and reject it with shock at our legalism, wondering how we could be so
bound up in our times and ignore so many more important things. They will “loosen up” on rules that will make
us roll over in our graves—things that our corpses would say “But you can’t
even be a Christian and do that!” And
they’ll add new things to their list that will turn us into sinners—like we’ve
added racism today and turned many of our own grandfathers into sinners. If we re-mint the book—we need to do it
humbly and not announce “we finally got it.”
Denominations that “finally get it” don’t get it! Our new snapshot will fade faster than the
one we’re trying to replace—sow e ought to be humble about it all.
So, am I
saying we shouldn’t re-mint our Articles of Religion and Membership
Commitments?
Not at
all!
We ought to
revisit them.
Just not
from scratch.
Keith
Drury
Appendix: Membership Ideas
I have been doing a series on church membership and getting
lots of great ideas from my readers. I
am impressed with the depth of insight my mail shows—there are some significant
thing here that should be considered by anyone who cares about membership
matters. If you need an “agenda of
ideas” to consider—let’s make one together—add your ideas here by emailing Keith Drury to get your ideas added
here. Just give thoughts and ideas for
denominational leaders and pastors to consider—to widen the circle of thought
about this subject.
[1] Well this is not totally accurate—they must grant a one-time authority later for the canonization process that extended several hundred years.
[2] I’m not saying that method does not shape theology, or that some methods are incompatible with good theology here—but that’s another article.
[3]
Many of my United Methodist readers have been sending
me chuckling emails during at this entire series on membership: they are
carrying on a debate about ordaining practicing homosexuals while my
denomination debates membership issues!
Most of my UM readers claim they know of no church—including their
own—that would exclude a practicing homosexual from membership!