Hi Homer,
I always assumed that passage was talking about lists of those whom would receive support from the church. Do you have some insight to share on that? I'd love to hear it.
But my real point was, I honestly don't see how having a list of known Christians (widows in this case) in a locality equates to church membership as we know it today (where one pledges allegiance to a specific congregation). Even fellowships (and house church networks for that matter) that don't have formal membership keep lists of e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and such for the people that are regular participants. In my mind, there's a difference between that and what is being put forth as biblical evidence supporting the need for formal church membership.
Institutional Church Membership
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christopher
- Posts: 120
- Joined: Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:50 pm
Re: Institutional Church Membership
I'd also just like to say something somewhat related to this topic.
When looking for a fellowship to meet with a few years ago, one of the criteria I sought for was a community that had interaction and collaboration with other communities as a core value. I'm happy to say that I found that in the fellowship we are in now. We have people in our community that openly attend other churches, participate in special programs and support groups of other churches, and we often have people that don't call ACF their primary community attend our functions and projects as well. We even have joint services with entire communities outside our own. This is not only tolerated, it's highly encouraged. Obviously this is not unique to our fellowship (which is good news in my mind).
At the risk of being overly optimistic here, I dare say this is a trend we will see a lot more of from this facebook and twitter generation in the not too distant future. And It's an encouraging trend too IMO.
Kind of makes "church membership" irrelevant doesn't it?
When looking for a fellowship to meet with a few years ago, one of the criteria I sought for was a community that had interaction and collaboration with other communities as a core value. I'm happy to say that I found that in the fellowship we are in now. We have people in our community that openly attend other churches, participate in special programs and support groups of other churches, and we often have people that don't call ACF their primary community attend our functions and projects as well. We even have joint services with entire communities outside our own. This is not only tolerated, it's highly encouraged. Obviously this is not unique to our fellowship (which is good news in my mind).
At the risk of being overly optimistic here, I dare say this is a trend we will see a lot more of from this facebook and twitter generation in the not too distant future. And It's an encouraging trend too IMO.
Kind of makes "church membership" irrelevant doesn't it?