I believe that discipleship and growth as well as church membership is important,
but I also know the struggles of being in a place you feel you do not belong. This
is typical when you have been in your church for a very long time, particularly for
those who grew up in the same church they were called in. I know the feeling of
being at the crossroads and it is not a simple thing to deal with. Regardless of
what decision you make, it will still hurt.
It is sad to hear, there are times when you do not fully understand what your
pastor is talking about. When this occurs, I think it is important to do your own
personal study and not rely solely on the teachings of leadership. As you stated,
sometimes they are busy while other times, they do things such as charging a fee
(which I do not necessarily agree with). There is also the issue, not all pastors
preach expositional sermons. The more this occurs, the more knowledge gaps
there will be within the church.
As Dever stated, a church that encourages expositional preaching is a church that
promotes Christian growth[1]. As many preachers continuously move away from
expositional preaching and focus more so on topical or feel-good preaching, I
believe, church growth, discipleship, and membership will decline. This is
something we need to fix.Church membership is an important metric to pay
attention to in the church today. a I feel that we spend too much time worrying
about the number of members and not enough time focusing on the number of
engaged members. a Do you have 500 people on your member roll? a Great – how
many are engaged? Do you have 1500 people on your member roll? a Great –
how many are engaged? a I would rather have a church membership roster of 25
and have 25 people that are in regular attendance, participating in events,
discipling one another, and living to glorify God over a membership roster of 500
plus that “attend” or just participate when it benefits them. a I have been a part of
both types of churches over the years and I will take the engaged church over the
populated church any day.
a a I agree with Dever that church membership should be about caring for one
another, ministering to one another, edify one another, and to be examples to one
another.[1] a Our stance at my current church is that membership is an intentional
process that is not for everyone. a Those that choose to join the membership are
committing to the church, specifically the body, to be an active and engaged part
of the body that will fulfill the exhortations of the Lord on the church. a When
people want to join our church, we hold a membership class and walk through
many of the Scriptures that Dever lists in Mark Six.[2] a When the class is done, we
provide them an application to take home and pray over. a We want people to take
time to absorb what they heard, pray over the Scriptures provided, and pray for
discernment that they are willing to be an active member of the church. a Our
attendance each week is approximately 250, and our member role is
approximately 200. a By our standards, and Dever’s, that is a healthy church
membership. a We have plenty of areas to improve, but I feel that we are very
blessed to have 80% of our attendees also be active and participating members.I
love that churches use social media and technology to reach more people and
engage more people. a I am curious to know more about your personal experience
and how social media related to your service on the dream team? a Was it that you
saw growth without connection or people walking away because of lack of
engagement? a Did you see growth in the youth ministry because of invitations to
church through social media? a Having served in a church with dream teams, I
found that they can be both a great opportunity or a missed opportunity for growth
and discipleship. a I was lead on two dream teams - ushers and safety. a We held
five services a week, so our dream teams were large. a Our usher team had more
than 100 people on the roster, whereas our safety team was a roster of 20. a The
usher team did not provide any other connection other than Sunday service. a I felt
this was a missed opportunity for a large group of Christians to disciple and lean
upon one another to walk together in Christ. a The safety team, however,
participated in bible study together, broke out into coffee ministries together, and
held quarterly family events to bond and “do life” together. a Many lives were
transformed in that ministry, and I am proud to say I was part of it. a There were
other dream teams in the church that fell into one or the other, and I feel that
churches that are large enough to do “dream teams” need to treat them as small
groups and engaged ministries and not just volunteers for service.
[1] Mark E. Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, 3rd ed., 9marks
(Nashville, TN: Crossway / Lifeway, 2013)., 160.
[2] Ibid., 161.
