We want membership, but why? — Connections Online

We want membership, but why?

Recently, a clergy couple in their late twenties wrote a thought-provoking email to me. They like most of what I have to say in my newsletters, but not my saying that the future of today's churches depended on reaching their age group. ''This is precisely the kind of talk," they pointed out, "that turns us off, along with many others our age, Christians and prospective Christians alike."

"It seems that as churches decline in membership," these younger pastors explained, "the focus of congregations becomes not seeking those who are lost, but getting younger people in the door because they are the church's future. The subtext is, 'They might keep this building up and keep this church from going under."'

God may not need "today's church"

The couple who wrote to me are also troubled by the expression "today's church." To them it means institutional churches in their present forms, many of which aren't doing what God needs done. "God needs churches that are faithful," my correspondents observed, "that are willing and ready to be 'tomorrow's churches,' trusting tomorrow to God."

"That means," these two readers went on to say, "that congregations have to be honest and ask tough questions. They need to ask, 'Is this congregation truly existing for the glory of God and as a witness to the world, or are we just trying to keep up a building and clinging possessively to old programs because we like them?'"

The church needs to reach younger generations, these pastors realize, "because our God is a God constantly seeking the lost, not because 'the future of the church depends on it'-this is extremely selfish of churches." Yet, these pastors say, "we experience this kind of congregational selfishness every day."

Getting clear about the church's purpose

The main question these comments are asking us to look at, it seems to me, and to be honest in answering, is "What is the purpose of the church?"

They ask us to look at whether we're concerned about God's purpose or just about our comfort and enjoyment.

Worshiping God and making disciples

A number of years ago I read about a survey of a thousand churches whose members were asked "Why does the church exist?" 89% said the church's purpose was to take care of their needs and their family's needs, yet according to the Bible this is not the purpose of the church.

If we look at what Jesus did during his time on earth, and what he commanded his followers to do, and at the various ways in which the churches described in the New Testament operated, we get a very different picture. We see that the church's main purposes are worshiping God, showing God's love to the world, and helping people to become more like Jesus and to live in the kind of community that is based on God's law of love. We may also believe that eternal salvation comes only through Christ, and thus that we need to try to bring everyone to Christ, but does accepting Jesus Christ as savior have to mean being on the official roll of an institutional church? I doubt that it does.