Expectations for Local Church Membership

Regular Attendance at Church Services

Where the information comes from. Some of it I've reworded a little bit, but most of them come directly from Nine Marks. And we're just going to read through them, and if you have a question or want to make a comment, you're welcome to.

But you're going to look first at what should the church expect from me if I join it? What should the church expect from me if I join the church? Well, the first thing, the church should expect that you would attend services regularly.

You know, one of the things that is a frustration is members that are MIA, missing in action. You know, they're never there. And the church, the assembly on the Lord's Day is not something that Christians should see as optional.

In fact, one of the great dangers of COVID has been that it has rewired the brains of many people to think that gathering is not essential. Because, hey, I can do it on Facebook, or I can do it on YouTube, or I can get on the Zoom call and have my gathering on Zoom.

And while all of those things have value, I mean, we have a camera right here. We're recording tonight. Obviously, there's some value in those things. But at the same time, the attendance is where we grow together in faith.

And it's also where the shepherds get to see the flock and talk to the flock. And obviously, there's more than just the gathering. But you know, if I'm a pastor of a church, and I don't see a member for a week or two weeks or three weeks, to me, there's a concern there.

That tells me I need to be finding out what's going on with this person. And why are they choosing not to be in the body? Is it a genuine forsaking of the assembly? Or is there something else going on in their life?

Is it not necessarily? Because the way we would see it is forsaking the assembly. You know, that's the Hebrews 10 passage, which tells us not to forsake the assembly. Forsaking the assembly is the road to leaving the body.

And if somebody's sick for three weeks, that's not them going to leave the body. That's just something that happened, right? Or if somebody's dealing with something at work, or whatever, you know, we have, we have some people here who are police officers and paramedics, well, they work two Sundays out of the month.

And so we know we're not going to see them on those two Sundays in the month, you know, I'm saying so. So there, there is an expectation of membership that you would be there. And certainly, regularly be there.

Regular Communion and Self-Examination

The second one on the list is to attend communion regularly, regularly, particularly is what it says attend communion, particularly, for our church, that's kind of superfluous, because we do communion every week.

But let me give you an example of how even in a church like ours, this would take place. Let's say that there's a church member who's coming, but refusing communion. Now, there may be a time in your life where you come into the body, and you don't feel like you should protect for whatever reason you may, you know, for First Corinthians 11 tells us to examine ourselves, right?

And so there is a time where you may come in and you feel like you shouldn't partake. And you don't. Okay, but if I see that two weeks in a row, three weeks in a row, four weeks in a row, three months, and you haven't partaken, then that's going to cause a question what's going on in your life.

For the last two, three, six weeks, that's causing this, because shouldn't be like that. You know what I mean? And I do think sometimes that's a misunderstanding of the of how communion works. You know, we don't have to be perfect to take communion, because we can't be.

You know what I mean? You can't expect perfection. To take communion. I did have a pastor asked me one time, he says, Have you ever, in your time as pastor, not taking communion? I said, No, because if I wouldn't take communion, I wouldn't preach.

So I have to deal with my heart every time I come. That is one of the things I used to we did communion before the sermon. And I and I asked the church elders at the time, this is probably five, six years ago, I said, Can we move it to the end of the service so that they have to deal with the word, and have the word speak to their heart before they take communion rather than before, rather than communion coming before communion used to be at the middle of the service.

And I said, No, no, no, we need to hear the word, we need to have the opportunity to repent and be, you know, receive that grace prior to going to that table. So. So anyway, so again, attending communion regularly, some churches only have communion once every month, or once every two months, or once every six months, if that's the case, and you forsake that, that's a big deal.

All right, because you're, you're giving up the only time you had, you know, maybe in a whole quarter that to take. So a communion is important. Number three, attend members meetings consistently. Again, depending on the church government that you're in, if it's a congregational church, then your voice matters, and you should be there.

But even if it's not like our church, we still have member meetings to tell the church what's going on and to make sure there's no questions. If a person has a question, they have every right as a member to ask, why are we doing this?

Or what are we doing? Or how are we doing this? And as a member of the body, you should be a part of that, to know what's going on in the body, what does the church need? Maybe we're having a financial crisis.

At the end of last year, we had a little financial crisis here at the church. We asked the church members to come and listen. Imagine somebody saying, I don't care. I don't care what's going on. Nobody did.

I'm just saying, imagine somebody doing that. That's, that's part of the part of being a member of the bodies, you do care. You know what I mean? And so being a part of the meetings is important, not just the worship, but meetings of the body.

The church should expect that you would pray regularly. You know, I do know that there are people in my church who pray for me all the time. They text me sometimes, I'm praying for you today. I have other pastors who text me, praying for you in your church this week, and that's a blessing.

But praying regularly. The next one is not real popular, give regularly. The church does have obligations and needs. And we're going to talk, this is actually, I think class eight, is how does the church support itself financially?

You know what I had a woman tell me one time? I remember it was in this room, not this one. It was before we moved. It was actually in this room, but this used to be a smaller room. But she was sitting right about here, and I was over there teaching, and I was talking about church giving.

And she said, well, I thought the government supported the churches. I don't feel down. I'm like, the government don't give us a dime, and we don't want it. I do not want a government-run church, and neither do you.

In fact, the whole idea, do you know who came up with the idea of the separation of church and state? It was the Baptists. The Magisterial Reformers were known as Calvin, Zwingli, and Luther. Do you know why they were called the Magisterial Reformers?

Because they had the support of the magistrates, the local governments supported them. Luther had the German government. Zwingli had the Swiss government. Calvin had the Swiss, the Genevan government.

They were state churches. In fact, the early colonies in the Americas tried to set up state churches. It was the Baptists who did not want state churches, and it was a letter to, I think it was the Danver Baptist Association, that the first time the phrase separation of church and state was used, there was a letter written to the Baptist Association promising them that the Constitution would uphold a wall of separation between church and state.

See, we do believe in separation of church and state. We just don't believe in the separation of God and government. There's a difference. The church should not have to bow to the state. And by that matter, the church also doesn't govern the state.

The Bible says God sets up governments and sets up churches. And there's actually three spheres of power in the world, by the way. Three spheres of authority, just something to consider. There are three social spheres set up by God.

The government, the church, and the family. Each one of those has its own structure. Father, mother, children, that's a family. Church, deacons, elders, you know, elders, deacons, and the body, that's the church.

The government is set up, you know, rulers and kings, and whether it's democracy or whatever, but they're ordained by God. Each one of them having a purpose, right, and a responsibility, and a sphere of power.

Church, State, and the Role of Christian Education

Yeah, and this, the idea that these two go together, nope. The church and the state should be separate. So, anyway, that was a little side lesson. Yes. Well, here's what, people ask me, that is a good question, Ross.

Here's the answer I always say. One, I don't use the public schools. I send my children to either a private school or i-home school. But when it comes to the school system, I would not want the school system teaching my children the Bible, because I think it's a dangerous.

So, I send them to a school that I can trust is going to teach them the Bible, or I teach it myself. But at the same time, I do think that there would be a place, even in the schools, for things like prayer time and things like that, and there used to be a time for that.

So, I mean, we could discuss that. That would be a longer conversation about what should be allowed, what should be encouraged. I certainly don't think anybody should be barred from bringing a Bible. I don't think anybody should be barred from bringing prayer into the school.

I don't think, I think the school should support things like Bible clubs. I used to lead a Bible club at First Coast. I worked there for a few years while I was at seminary, and I ran a Bible club when I was there.

So, I think all those things are good. But, yeah, I would hate for some of these teachers to teach my kids about Jesus, because they would teach all the wrong things. So, yeah, I think that's a longer conversation.

But, yes, the separation of church and state, the idea is that the state would not be able to come in and govern the church. And the state doesn't owe the church anything. The church isn't paid by the state.

How does the church receive money? How do I receive a paycheck? The body, right? We ask our church every year, will you support this budget? We lay the budget out. It has everything. One thing about it, everybody knows what I make, because literally every dime I get is listed.

And the church is very generous. They pay my salary, they pay for me to have health insurance and things like that, and it's all listed out. Everybody knows exactly how much money goes to me, how much money goes to the missionaries, how much money goes to the light bill.

And the congregation knows that, right? So, that's part of giving. And if you're a, huh? Accountability as well. That's right. And church members, when you give, that's what it goes towards. It goes towards supporting the church.

The other thing, getting down the list, we may not get to all these, and that's okay, because you're going to have this to take home and read. But very quickly to finish out, building relationships with others, that's huge.

If you don't have a relationship within the body, that's a problem. Submitting to the church leaders, we talked about that already, and serving as God gives opportunity. And we're going to talk some in the third and fourth, or rather fourth and fifth class, about what God has gifted you uniquely to do, because everybody serves differently.

What a Church Should Provide Its Members

Now, on the other, on the bottom side of that sheet is what should I expect from the church? Here's what you should expect from the church. And if you're not getting this from the church that you're in, maybe you should, now you guys are at set free, most of you.

Understand, I'm not, I wasn't saying you're not at set free, because most of you are, but if you're at a different church, and you're not getting these things, understand, you should be getting expository preaching.

What is expository preaching? That doesn't mean that the person's going verse by verse through books of the Bible. That's the way I do it. That's not the only way to do it. But expository preaching is preaching that comes from the Bible, not from men's opinions.

Number two, you should expect biblical theology, again, the theology to be from the Bible. Number three, a biblical understanding of the gospel. One of the things you should ask, if you decide to join a local church, ask the pastor to share the gospel with you, because he might not even understand it.

I remember, I was right over here at the Verizon store. We had a little booth set up out there, we had this little thing, and this guy walked by, we have a sign on our booth that says, do you understand the gospel?

And he said, that's a tough question. I said, who are you? He said, I'm pastor so-and-so. I was like, no, it wasn't, it wasn't Herb. No, but he was like, that's a tough question. I was like, wait a minute, it's a tough question.

This is your job. This is literally what you do. We talked about it. Well, I just remember him saying, well, that's a hard question. No, that's the good news. That's right. A biblical understanding of conversion.

And again, if you don't understand the gospel, you can't understand how a man's converted. And this is how you start to understand how a church body is put together. If the church doesn't understand the gospel, if a church doesn't understand conversion, then you probably got a group of unconverted people in this place.

That's an issue. Joining a group of unconverted people. A biblical understanding of evangelism. How does this church make converts? How does this church make disciples? Because that's going to tell you what they think of the gospel.

That's going to tell you what they think of conversion. And then biblical church membership. Does the church take membership seriously? Biblical church discipline. Now you might say, wait a minute. I don't think that can be included as to what we should expect.

Let me tell you this. John Calvin wrote this. What are the three things, the three things that constitute a local church? He said this. Number one, preaches the gospel. Number two, it administers the sacraments.

That's baptism in the Lord's Supper. And three, it exercises discipline. And he said without those three things, it cannot be a local church. The sad thing is I can throw a stick and hit seven or eight churches that don't practice discipline.

So according to Calvin, they're not churches. Now, I'm not saying they're not. I'm saying Calvin said it. But the point is, what is a church that doesn't have any standards? That does not call people to repentance?

There's no order. Biblical discipleship and growth. Does the church expect and equip its members to grow? And finally, biblical church leadership. Is the church led by godly, qualified men? And we are going to talk about men and women in class four, whether or not a woman qualifies to serve as an elder.

Spoiler alert. No. But no. But that is a debate that people have. And we can we can discuss it when that class comes up. But that is the this is the things. These are the things that we should be looking for.

Any questions? Is this helpful? Good deal. All right. Well, praise the Lord. We are. Let us end with prayer. Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the study. And I pray that the study of your word as we know it will never return void.

Lord, let it be fruitful. Let it help us to draw closer to you in Christ's name. Amen.