Formal Membership

Part of the Baptist way of shaping church and church life means acknowledging what we don’t have. We don’t have a national body or a bishop far away who tells us what it is that God is doing in and through our faith family and how we must respond. We don’t have pastors and an eldership that make decisions without there being input from, and accountability to, the body we’re asked to lead.

Instead, each Baptist church comes before God as a distinct community of believers to discern together where Jesus is active and where He is actively beckoning us to come alongside Him and work for His Kingdom, where we are. As the ‘priesthood of all believers’ we come together and discuss, pray, listen and seek the direction of Jesus. 

One of the ways we signal how we have heard is by way of voting in matters of church life. Not because we are a democratic congregation and everyone gets a vote, but because we are a Christocracy, acknowledging that we are best able to hear the Risen Jesus, our Head, when we gather and seek direction as His family.

Formal church membership pulls us into the grand story of God’s covenant love, too. Just as water baptism is a public statement of a personal commitment to God, formal membership echoes the covenant God made with us through Jesus. It’s a public statement of a personal commitment to the church we find ourselves called to worship with, grow in and outwork our mission with at any particular point of time

Formal membership is a beautiful way to express commitment to a family of faith!

If this is something you’d like to know more about, come and catch me after a service, send me a text or give me a call. I would love to carry on the conversation.

Colleen