More on Local Church Membership

OK. I'm quoting a lot of Leeman because I'm reading it for a class. Plus it's just a good book. More on the necessity of church membership:

"A man who claims to be righteous in Christ and yet makes not effort to pursue a life of righteousness is, at best, self-deceived. Likewise, a woman who claims to love all Christians everywhere but does not love her Christian sister is likewise self-deceived. Both are hypocrites. They are nominal Christians--Christians in name only--because their profession does not translate into action or reality...So too with one who claims to belong to the church without belonging to a church. I fear that he looks very much like a nominal Christian and a hypocrite. The apostolic church on earth was given the authority to bind and loose. What else can we conclude about someone who professes to belong to the church but will not submit to an apostolic church on earth? As the apostle John puts it, 'He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20).'"

--Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love 

Not Joining a Local Church is Not an Option

"Christians do comprise "the church," but Paul and Jesus both speak as if it's the gathering that constitutes us as a church, just like a basketball team must gather in order to be considered " a team." This formal gathering has an existence and an authority that none of us has separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because Christ has given the whole an organizational charter. Nineteenth century Congregationalist pastor John Angell James put it like this: 'A church member is something more than a Christian, just as a citizen is something more than a man. Each has duties arising from the relationship--to state or to church.'

The church on earth is located in the local church. If Christ calls us to submit to him by submitting to the apostolic church, he intends for us to do this through the local church. To refuse his lordship by refusing to submit to a true local church, if one exists where on geographically abides, calls into question whether we have been truly converted. It's true that we must choose to join, and it's true--in some places in this world--that we have to choose which church to join. But not joining, if a local church exists, is not really an option. Membership in the local church is voluntary, and it's not voluntary."

--Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love 

 

Pigs Wandering through the Worship Service

"The Christian who travels may be surprised to see pigs wander through an African church service, or to hear the Scriptures chanted by Muslim converts, but be moved to praise, singing the multi-cultural universality that springs from the unity of God's truth. At Pentecost the divisions of Babel were overcome. The apostles spoke no heavenly language, or even a spiritual Esperanto as one universal language, but the many languages of their world. Yet their message unified divided peoples and formed a new humanity in the church."

--Edmund Clowney, The Church