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Reflections on the meaning of church membership

David Giesbrecht

Over the last four decades or so, I have had the great privilege of experiencing and observing the church from various perspectives. As a young man, I was baptized into an accepting and loving congregation in my home community. Several years later, I began to participate in an indigenous Nigerian church largely made up of illiterate people. Later again, in Jamaica, I experienced both a Plymouth Brethren Assembly, with its quite unpredictable services, and a staid Anglican fellowship, rich and regular in its liturgy. For the last 25 years, I have been a member of Bakerview Mennonite Brethren Church in Abbotsford, B.C.


Over these years, some in my family, a few of my earlier teachers and certainly many of my friends have abandoned the church, and in some cases the Christian faith as well. I am sad about these desertions, and keenly feel the loss. Suspicion towards the institutional church notwithstanding, I continue to think that the church deserves our loyalty and respect.

The bride of Christ

The heart of the matter for me is this. The church is the bride of Christ. Paul unequivocally affirms that “Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Saviour” (Ephesians 5:23). If Christ finds such inestimable worth in the church, then so must I. Between Christ and His church there exists a relationship of intense caring and giving. Moreover, the church reflects all that we can know of Christ. Elsewhere, Paul describes the church, Christ’s body, as “the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:23).

Such an understanding of the church brings with it some practical consequences. First is the recognition that members do not own the church, but are stewards and guardians over a precious treasure, the Christian faith, the gospel of Christ. I value the church because it is the best forum for understanding Christ and the chosen vehicle to represent His gospel to our world.

A solid foundation

I also treasure the church because it is the most enduring institution on earth. At the very outset, Jesus said, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18). For 20 centuries, this church of Christ has endured, despite opposing empires, cruel persecutions and the ravages of “intellectual enlightenment”. We could all cite systems of thought that have run their course, huge corporations that have crumbled, countries that have disappeared, towering leaders who have inexplicably exited the world stage. Not so the church. If we wish to place our energies in an enterprise that endures, where the value of the assets grows, the church continues to be a profitable place to invest.

The ideal of community

Moreover, the church reflects an ideal of community. The Christian faith calls us to seemingly impossible but very desirable levels of human interaction. Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

One aspect of this ideal of community is that the church calls each member to share his or her God-given talents. This call is first extended to leadership. The church has a very strong obligation to release its leaders to lead, its preachers to preach and its teachers to teach. Any church that fails to enable its leaders for public ministry (while still remaining within accountability structures), does so at its own very great expense.

Equally important, this call extends not only to leaders but to all in the church. The gifts that appear in 1 Corinthians 12 are clearly reflective of the entire membership, not just of a chosen few: “All these [gifts] are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He gives them to each one just as He determines” (verse 11). There is something very noble about a community that values and encourages its members (including children) to share their gifts. In fact, what the church says when it values the gifts of individual members, is that it values its members as individuals. In our age of depersonalization, this is a precious gift indeed.

The ideal of purity

I also treasure the church because it calls us to an ideal of purity: “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1 Peter 1:15). This is hard, in fact humanly impossible, especially in our society. We live in an invasive culture that seeks to impose its values on us at every turn. Consider for a moment the video outlets and theatres sprouting so over-abundantly in our cities and towns. Or consider the horrors perpetrated on the Internet in the name of freedom of speech. Recently the Vancouver Sun carried a story noting the decision of leaders in a Jewish kibutz to banish all Internet access because they considered such media links capable of destroying their entire community. To speak about purity in our society is to be out of step with the time, but it is very in step with in our own best interests, and the interests of the community of which we are a part.

The call to forgiveness

I am also grateful that when there is failure and sin, the church, and the faith it represents, call us to model forgiveness: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32). This is a forgiveness that kicks in especially where real hurts have been experienced, and real sins committed.

Not long ago, my wife and I attended the diamond wedding anniversary of dear friends. He was a highly decorated officer in the German army. But by the end of World War II it was not the iron cross on his chest but a new understanding of the cross of Christ in his heart that liberated him. Today this man knows something about extending forgiveness because in Christ he has been freed from an enormously troubled conscience – but only at great personal cost. Therein lies the secret of forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness is a costly business.

It seems to me that there can be no healthy, enduring community or church unless its members have accepted the need for repentance and learned the grace of forgiveness. It is in the very nature of things that we hurt one another when we are involved at close range in enterprises that really matter to us. Therefore, I am grateful that a faithful church will always call us to seek forgiveness for our own wrongs, and also to generously offer forgiveness to others.

Without being blind or indifferent to its shortcomings, I treasure the church and value the ideals it represents.

David Giesbrecht is librarian at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C., and vice-chair of the Canadian MB Conference Board of Communications.

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Last modified May 4, 2000.

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