non-coms & membership

I was thinking some more about one of the things I mentioned in yesterday's post.

The 'non-coms' in our membership.

The sizeable number of people who, for one reason or another, are simply not 'communicating' any more. I don't mean that in the sense that they're not talking with folk. I mean it in the 'technical' sense of their not participating in the regular weekly worship of God's people here and the sacrament we call 'communion'.

We've got slack when it comes to membership, I think. And there's a good lot of work we're going to be having to do in this regard in coming months.

Thinking along these lines drove me back to a piece I read a while ago entitled 'How we do Congregational Care and Oversight'. I'll not quote it all (it's really quite long), but here are a couple of passages which highlight the sort of issues which we need to be addressing.

We stress membership at our church. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is very practical. Membership helps us care for people. Without membership it is hard to know who is really a part of our church and who is passing through or just floating around. But when someone joins the church we know this person is committed to our body and we need to be committed to him.

What does the membership process look like (here)? Two or three times a year we offer a 10 week membership class ... (which) covers a lot of material, including our theology, our statement of faith, our membership covenant, our polity, our ministries, spiritual disciplines, spiritual gifts, and how to get plugged in to the church. ...

In my experience, people will not take a membership class unless (1) they know membership actually means something, (2) membership is talked about, at least once in awhile, from the front, and (3) they are personally invited.

At the end of the class everyone signs up for an elder interview.

We usually meet with people in elder teams of two or three. The interviews run about 30 minutes. Some questions always get asked: How did you become a Christian? Why did you come to our church? Who is Jesus Christ? What do you believe about the Bible? What is the gospel?

We try to make the interview as non-threatening as possible. Most often it is a time to get to know new people (and they their elders) and celebrate God’s grace in their lives. Sometimes, however, we need to meet with people again. We will delay their membership if we feel like they aren’t ready, but this is rare.

They make it clear from the outset that membership is taken really seriously. And they follow it through with a rigorous pastoral oversight.

The article closes by raising a pertinent question.

We are required by our denomination’s Book of Church order to ask at our elders’ meetings, “who is in need of spiritual care and/or not making faithful use of the means of grace?”

It’s a good policy. But I wonder how many churches in our denomination or yours regularly ask this question. And I wonder how many churches have any mechanism in place to know who these people are and how to help them once they are identified.

This is one of the issues we're working on these days. And I have to say, there's a lot of important work we're needing to do in this regard!