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. c 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. c Do you have 500 people on your member roll? c
Great – how many are engaged? Do you have 1500 people on your member
roll? c Great – how many are engaged? c 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. c 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.
c c 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] Our stance at my current church is that membership is an
intentional process that is not for everyone. c 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. c 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] c When
the class is done, we provide them an application to take home and pray over. c
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. c Our attendance each week is approximately 250,
and our member role is approximately 200. c By our standards, and Dever’s, that
is a healthy church membership. c 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. c I am curious to know more about
your personal experience and how social media related to your service on the
dream team? c Was it that you saw growth without connection or people walking
away because of lack of engagement? c Did you see growth in the youth
ministry because of invitations to church through social media? c 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. c I was lead on two dream
teams - ushers and safety. c We held five services a week, so our dream teams
were large. c Our usher team had more than 100 people on the roster, whereas
our safety team was a roster of 20. c The usher team did not provide any other
connection other than Sunday service. c 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. c 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. c Many lives were transformed in that ministry, and I am proud
to say I was part of it. c 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.
