Is church membership necessary? What does church membership mean? What obligations does it entail? Michael Riley answers these questions in “The Necessity of Church Membership” at Diakrisis.
Membership is important because church discipline is designed by God as a way for you to grow spiritually. As we have already seen, discipline only makes sense if membership exists. Your theology might be deeply opposed our church’s, and your decisions might violate our church covenant at every point, and yet I won’t be coming to your house to ask you about it—if you are not a member of our church. And while you might think that it would be better not to have that kind of accountability, the Bible says otherwise.
