Tent Width Oct 25, 2006
Observations on Controversy Oct 24, 2007
First Impressions Dec 5, 2006
The title of this post represents a practice in Southern Baptist life that has always concerned me. Contained within this phrase is the idea that a person’s membership in a local church somehow has its substance in a “letter” that can be moved from place to place. It is not a covenant relationship, but a clerical exercise. But is this practice in any way biblical?
Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.
- Acts 18:24-28 (ESV)
This passage seems to be about as close as one can come to a biblical argument for our practice of “letters of recommendation,” although it strikes me as more of a ministerial recommendation that one for membership. And I don’t think I would be at all uncomfortable with a practice by that name if it had any real resemblance to the mental image that the phrase “letter of recommendation” creates in most people. One could reasonably expect that, in the case of a member in good standing, there would be some discussion about a person’s contribution to their local church, their giftedness, and their ability to serve the local church. The person would have discussed their need to join another congregation with the leaders of their present church, and everyone would be aware of the impending move. A letter would be drafted detailing the person’s experience of salvation and baptism, their history of service, and the current church’s good wishes to the sister congregation. But our practice of granting letters really isn’t anything like that.
In my experience, the granting of letters is a footnote in a business meeting wherein the clerk reads the name of a member and the church requesting a letter, someone makes a motion, and the “letter” is granted (sometimes after a discussion in which someone suggests that the person may, in fact, be dead). The clerk then fills out a card (available here), and the person is removed as a member. There is no discussion of whether the person even gives evidence of being a Christian, much less whether they are someone who should be the subject of a “letter of recommendation.”
In the two years I have served as pastor of my current church, I have made a handful of phone calls to pastors, either when receiving a request for a letter or when someone I know to be a member of a nearby church shows interest in joining here. In each and every case, I have been treated quite dismissively, usually after the pastor with whom I am talking gets over their surprise that anyone would even waste a phone call on such a matter. Needless to say, these experiences have been discouraging.
I leave for the comments a couple of questions. First, do the things I have written about here even constitute a problem? And if so, what are some practical solutions? Cyle Clayton has written an excellent piece on this subject over at sbc IMPACT! which spurred the thinking that led to this somewhat rambling post. I encourage you to read and interact with what he has written as well.
There seems to be a growing resurgence in SBC life of a concern for authentic church membership. What part does this practice of “moving letters” play in the degradation of the integrity of membership in a local church?
It was my privilege to serve as chairman of the resolutions committee of the Frisco Baptist Association this year. We had our 114th annual meeting last night, and our committee presented five resolutions, all of which passed without opposition.
I have posted some commentary on our resolution on church membership and baptism, as well as the text of that resolution, on SBC Today. Stop by when you have a chance.
On an unrelated note, I understand there will be some homemaking news coming out of this blog sometime soon. Don’t miss it.
In doing some research for a report I am to deliver to the Frisco Baptist Association at next week’s annual meeting, I read through some of the minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association from their meetings in the eighteenth century. My last two posts on the subject of church membership and discipline (here and here) generated some healthy discussion on the topic, so I thought I would add the view of some of our Baptist forefathers to the mix, in the form of responses the association gave to queries from member churches.
Their regard for the importance of membership in the local church was so great that they didn’t believe it proper for someone to pass another Baptist church on their way to the one of which they were a member. This is from the annual meeting of 1735:
Upon a motion moved by some members of the Association:
Whether a person that is a well-wisher to us, and desires to be admitted a member into a church far distant from the place of his abode; whereas a church of the same order is nearer to him than the church that he proposed to join with; whether it be orderly for the distant church to receive such an one? Yea or nay?
Resolved in the negative, there being substantial reasons to the contrary. Such practice is contrary to the intendent, in instituting particular churches.
They also didn’t think it proper for a person to change their church membership unless it was required by a move, as they asserted in the annual meeting of 1728:
Query from the church at Montgomery: Whether a church is bound to grant a letter of dismission to any member to go to another church, while his residence is not removed?
Answered in the negative, we having neither precept nor precedent for such a practice in Scripture.
Does it bother the pastors in my readership when faithful members are missing from services, and later they can’t wait to tell you about the nearby preacher they went and heard instead of coming to their own church? It bothered our eighteenth-century brethren, if the following answer to a query from the church at Middletown is any indication (from 1734):
Whether it be justifiable for our members to neglect our own appointed meetings, and at their pleasure go to hear those differing in judgment from us?
Answered in the negative. Heb. x. 25
I don’t think anyone would argue against the reality that church membership today doesn’t mean what it used to mean. The questions I have are these: Are the attitudes toward membership reflected in these answers worth reclaiming, and if so, how do we go about reclaiming them?
Dr. Bart Barber has recently published on his blog an outline of what he calls The Fifth Century Initiative. It is a document that outlines doctrines and practices that are biblical and have historically distinguished those who call themselves Baptist from other Christian groups, and calls for a renewal of emphasis on these distinctives. I am excited to see such a document, and will do all I can to promote the concepts it contains.
I want to highlight two of the items in Dr. Barber’s (despite his characteristic modesty, he did pull all this together) list which are very much interrelated, and which, taken together, amount to the Baptist church equivalent of the third rail. They are “The Recovery of Regenerate Church Membership” and “The Renewed Exercise of Biblical Church Discipline.”
I don’t intend to define these points here; if you’re reading this blog, chances are you know what is meant by these phrases. Instead, I want to consider why it is that it is taken for granted that “recovery” and “renewal” are needed, rather than, say, “continuation” or “maintenance.”
I remember looking through the minutes from business meetings at the first church where I served on staff, a little church in Thackerville, Oklahoma. The minutes went back to around 1900, and it was not at all uncommon to find records of folks having been excluded from the membership of the church. One man in particular that I remember was “churched” for the ghastly public sin of having “played the fiddle at a dance.” Some weeks later, the man came before the membership, repented, and was restored to full fellowship.
This might seem like a silly thing over which to exclude someone, but the community of saints in Thackerville in 190? apparently viewed it as a matter serious enough for serious action. The point is that today, we would never think of doing such a thing over something like that. Perhaps that is good, but I fear that we have also come to the place where we likely wouldn’t consider such action even if, say, “a man [had] his father’s wife.” We (all of us) have folks on our membership roll who are involved in behavior just as sinful, and just as detrimental to the witness of the church in the community, as the man called out by the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 5, yet we do nothing. In 100 years, we have gone from being very serious about sin in the life of the church to being very serious about not offending anyone in the church, to the extent that we will overlook all manner of sinfulness in order to get along. Space does not permit me to explore all that is in my brain regarding the cause of this shift, but that it has happened is undeniable. We are where we are.
So what must we do? We must touch, and even embrace, that third rail. We who are called by God to stand before His people every week must cease being concerned with what people will say about us, and start showing concern for what our Lord will say to us at the judgment seat of Christ. We must follow the example of Paul, who said, “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” We must love our people enough to warn them of danger, even when they don’t want to be warned, and even when they lash out at us for doing so.
Yesterday, I was listening to The Albert Mohler Program on satellite radio. His topic was the failure of preachers to address the subject of divorce from the pulpit, and his ultimate conclusion was that it was the fear of man that was to blame. It is easy to say, but until we trust God more than we fear men, many of these issues will go unresolved.
I’ve been engaging a Mormon named Bill in a wide-ranging discussion over on Kevin Bussey’s blog, and to confront him with what the LDS church teaches and get him to respond to specific questions is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Bill is a former Southern Baptist.
By all accounts, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the fastest growing religious group in America today, and while I can’t remember where, I’ve read that they gain more converts from Baptist churches than from any other group. Their growth roughly corresponds chronologically with what John Hammet, in his excellent work Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches, identifies as the disappearance of regenerate church membership. This disappearance was a gradual process that began late in the nineteenth century, when most Baptist churches had far more attendees than members, and has continued to the present when, in the SBC, more than ten million of our roughly sixteen million members spend their Sundays anywhere but in church. These numbers make our claim to a regenerate church membership seem somewhat hollow.
Hammett quotes Justice Anderson on the centrality of regenerate church membership to the Baptist identity: “The cardinal principle of Baptist ecclesiology, and logically, the point of departure for church polity, is the insistence on a regenerate membership in the local congregation.” Hammett then identifies an ecclesiological explanation for the loss of this “cardinal principle”:
“…believer’s baptism and church discipline served to protect regenerate church membership. Regenerate church membership began to disappear as these two safeguards were relaxed.”
I can’t help but wonder about the possibility that, if we become serious about regenerate church membership, by being more meticulous in baptizing only those whose lives show them to be believers, and by reclaiming redemptive discipline of those whose lives are not congruent with their profession of faith, we might staunch the flow of Baptists to a “church” where much is required of members, and where their salvation and eternal reward are dependent on their faithfulness rather than upon God’s grace.
Peter Beck, pastor of Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and a Ph.D. student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written an excellent First Person column for Baptist Press that contains some of the strongest language I have yet seen in print regarding the problem of non-attending church “members.” Here is a sample:
We need to stop waiting for [members who no longer attend] to return, stop treating them like members, and start treating them like unbelievers. We need to share something more than good memories with them. We need to share the Gospel.
As a pastor, I appreciate the challenge Beck offers. Hebrews 13 tells us that leaders in the church are “keeping watch over … souls, as those who will have to give an acount.” I tremble at this verse, especially when I consider how many are on our roll as members, yet are demonstrably in open disobedience to the command that we “not neglect to meet together.”
In teaching on 1 John, it is important to emphasize that while believers will still sin, it will be the occasion in the life of a true believer rather than the pattern. To what conclusion must this lead us regarding those who never attend the meetings of the body of Christ? The answer is obvious, and sobering.
I appreciate the efforts of Mark Dever, Tom Ascol, Art Rogers, and others to provide for us an example of returning to a model of church membership that offers true assurance rather than a false sense of security. And I appreciate Peter Beck’s firm voice in this, as well.
Tonight was the 113th annual meeting of the Frisco Baptist Association. It was a great time of sweet fellowship, challenging messages, and good food (we are Baptists, after all).
I had the privilege of serving on our association’s resolutions committee this year, and one of the five resolutions we submitted to the annual meeting was on baptism and church membership. This, with some modifications, is the resolution I had written for another annual meeting, and our director of missions asked that we make a statement on this topic, so the committee modified and submitted my resolution.
I’d be very interested in your thoughts. Below is the text of the unanimously adopted resolution:
On Baptism and Church Membership
Whereas, Baptism is chief among the doctrinal distinctives that we as Southern Baptists hold dear; and
Whereas, Baptism is a requirement, not for salvation, but for obedience to the example and to the explicit instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
Whereas, Membership in the local church is a covenant relationship of mutual accountability and submission, both to one another and to the Lordship of Christ, and
Whereas, The Baptist Faith and Message adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 14, 2000 clearly states that baptism, as one of the two ordinances of the church, is a prerequisite to the privileges of church membership (Article VII), now therefore be it
Resolved, that the messengers of the Frisco Baptist Association, in annual session October 10, 2006 affirm our belief in and commitment to the principle of a regenerate and scripturally baptized church membership.
(Matthew 3:15; 28:19)
Dr. Tom Elliff, senior vice president for Spiritual Nurture and Church Relations with the International Mission Board, has written an excellent article on the importance of baptism. [HT: Nathan Finn] His article appears in the September edition of SBC Life.
Dr. Elliff’s article speaks clearly to the recent controversies surrounding churches which have considered eliminating or significantly changing the requirement of baptism as a prerequisite for church membership. He tells a story of preaching to over two thousand people in a country where Christians live under threat of persecution. At the end of the service, the pastor announced that the church “would then observe the Lord’s Table.”
At this announcement, more than a thousand people walked away. Dr. Elliff tells of asking through an interpreter why so many were leaving, to which the pastor responded, “Oh, these people are not yet willing to die.”
Baptism was a prerequisite to membership and the Lord’s Supper in this church, and baptism had cost many their lives.
Dr. Elliff also speaks clearly to the issues that are in play with last November’s adoption by the IMB trustees of a new guideline for baptism. This guideline requires, among other things, that the candidate must have been baptized in a church that affirms eternal security. I continue to believe that this is a good and defensible guideline, but Dr. Elliff says it far better than I, so I will let him speak. I have added emphasis to those things that I think most pertinent to the IMB guideline:
Baptism is a public testimony. It preaches something to an audience. While it is personal, it is not private. As a result, one’s baptism takes on the meaning of the church authorizing it. If a person comes to faith in Christ after a previous “baptismal experience,” or if a person realizes that an earlier immersion did not appropriately convey the idea of an eternally-secure salvation by grace through faith in the forever-resurrected Christ alone, then the example above argues for “scriptural baptism.” Such an act of obedience actually then clarifies their testimony and opens the door for ministry in the church and through the entities supported by the church.
I commend this article to you. Dr. Elliff is a former president of our convention, he is a former Oklahoma pastor, and his is an important and useful voice to hear as we debate these issues.
As you might imagine, the July 20 edition of the Baptist Messenger, with it’s special section dedicated to the issue of baptism and church membership, elicited some reader response. One of those caused me to consider some things I hadn’t before, and I want to share part of a letter to the editor here and ask for your reaction it.
This comes from Greg Clift, who is a member of the First Baptist Church in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He suggests that membership is too easy, and offers the following:
There should be two levels of church participation, although church membership or participation in no way eliminates one from the body of Christ and being a Christian.
“Official” church membership should be reserved for those committed, baptized, resident, interviewed adult believers, who seek it, and who live impeccable lifestyles at home and in public, tithe and attend faithfully, serve or minister in some capacity, are hospitable, above reproach, scritinized, submit to church authority, sign and adhere to a church covenant, actively being discipled, etc.
All other attenders are considered “fellowshipers,” and are still vital participants. “Fellowshipers” are welcome to participate and serve in all church activities and ministries. They can utilize church facilities and resources for weddings, funerals, baptism, etc., but may not be “official” members, amy not hold significant church leadership or office and may not vote (in a congregational form of church government).
All of these participants will together make up the local church.
All of us who have participated in recent debates seem to recognize that church membership, as we have it today, is not something that we see clearly in the pages of the New Testament. Since we aren’t likely to be scrapping it any time soon, what would be wrong with making it significantly more difficult, as Mr. Clift suggests?
Your thoughts, please…
Pastor Dennis Newkirk confirms on his blog that the elder council will not ask the church to vote on the bylaw change they had proposed. It is not clear whether this is a postponement or a cancellation, but in either case, the bylaws of Henderson Hills Baptist Church still require that members be scripturally baptized, and for that I am thankful.
We must be careful about reaching the conclusion that this move is the result of public pressure. Pastor Newkirk and the elders at HHBC have been nothing if not thoughtful and deliberate in this process, and this can not have been an easy decision for them. And in any case, with the public challenges, and in some cases vicious personal attacks, they have already faced, it seems that they have weathered the most difficult part of this particular storm. It doesn’t make sense that they would postpone the vote after all that for that reason.
I have seen since I began following this story a disconnect between what has been said about this change and what the change actually proposed to do. My previous post contains the exact language to be changed, and the effect of that change would have been the possibility that someone could become a member of HHBC without being baptized at all. In one of his messages to the church, Pastor Newkirk responded to the question of many, “Why would you want a member who hasn’t been baptized?”, by saying, “We wouldn’t.” He has said repeatedly that they are only talking about accepting those who were perhaps sprinkled as children, and have not come to a clear conviction of their need for believer’s baptism, and those who are physically unable to tolerate immersion.
I have said many times that I think there is room for flexibility of mode for the person who understands and desires to be obedient in believers baptism by immersion but is medically prevented. I don’t think we should abandon common sense in pursuit of a rigid, legalistic attitude toward baptism. They should be accepted.
For the person yet to be convinced of the need for believer’s baptism, my first question would be of their reasons for desiring membership in a Baptist church. I would want a church to love, embrace, and teach that person, but they don’t appear to me to be a candidate for membership. The need for an exception here is much less clear to me.
If you’ll allow me a military analogy, it seems to me that these exceptions could be addressed tactically rather than strategically. A tactical approach would require individual attention to individual circumstances, and HHBC’s elders have proposed the strategic move of removing the requirement altogether. I think this is where their greatest error lies, and perhaps the postponement (cancellation) of this vote reflects a desire to move to a more tactical approach.
I pray for an approach to be found that would preserve an historic, and I believe biblical, Baptist distinctive, as well as preserving the fellowship HHBC enjoys with other Southern Baptist churches.
Tent Width Oct 25, 2006
Observations on Controversy Oct 24, 2007
First Impressions Dec 5, 2006
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