Church Membership in the Life of the Church (August 6, 2023)

This morning's sermon I've titled Church Membership and the Life of the Church. Church Membership and the

Life of the Church, and it's going to be a little bit different sermon than we normally would do, because normally what we do is we take a passage of Scripture and just kind of go through it, and it's usually the passage that's just next in whatever book we're going through.

And so, last year we went through Mark, this past summer we started going through Proverbs, we're going to pick up with Proverbs.

Next summer we're going to begin the book of Acts on August the 27th, because that's what we normally do, and then just whatever the passage says, that's what we say.

But you'll notice in the bulletin today, I didn't put a Scripture passage there, and it's not because we're not going to use the

Bible, it's because we're going to use the Bible in a lot of different places. And the reason we're doing this is that sometimes there are topics that we need to address and there's just not a go -to passage, there's not a one -stop shop where we can go to that passage and find everything that we need to address that topic.

And that's the case with the topic of church membership. Now some people might take that fact that you can't go anywhere and just find what you need to about church membership and say, see, church membership's not important, or church membership's not in the

Bible, or why do I need to be a member? And so with college football season coming up, you've seen college game day

I would imagine, I would want to give my best Lee Corso impersonation and say, not so fast my friend, not so fast.

Church membership is important, and church membership is in the Bible, and outside of extenuating circumstances, every

Christian ought to be a meaningful member of a local church. And so what

I want to do this morning is, I want to begin by presenting a biblical case for church membership, and then flowing out of that,

I want us to see the benefits of church membership in the life of the church, I want us to see what membership practically looks like in the life of our church, and what we're aiming for, that is what somebody can expect when they become a member and what's expected of them, and then

I want to make some applications for us, one of which will make it obvious of why we're talking about church membership in the first place this morning, but let's begin, let's begin with the biblical case for church membership.

And so the question we could ask is, is church membership in the Bible? And so to answer that question, well if you're looking for a verse that says very explicitly thou shalt be a member of a church, well you're not going to find that.

That verse is not in the Bible. But if you look for the concept of church membership, you're going to find that all over the place.

And so Mark Dever, he's a pastor up in D .C., he talks about a membership triangle. So you picture the three points of a triangle, and you place, at one point of the triangle you place the individual

Christian, and at another point of the triangle you place a group of Christians, and at the other point of the triangle you place church leadership, you place pastors there, and there's stuff all throughout the

New Testament that talks about the relationships of these different points of the triangle.

So how individual Christians relate to groups of Christians, how individual Christians relate to pastors, and how pastors relate to groups, and how pastors relate to individuals, and vice versa, all along that triangle, back and forth, the

New Testament is full of instruction on these relationships. And what we can say is that church membership is a shorthand for referring to all of that.

Church membership is a shorthand way to refer to all of those relationships. And then, beyond the instructions about relationships, and how we relate to one another, we want to ask the question, is the concept of a defined church membership found in the

Bible? And my answer to that is, yes. And while it may not be explicit, thou shalt be a member of a church, we get to church membership by what old theologians called good and necessary consequence, of what is explicit in the

Bible. We get there by good and necessary consequence. And so, lest you think I'm playing kind of fast and loose with the

Bible there, I want to give one example of how we do this on a topic that no

Christians disagree about. And so, for example, you won't find the word Trinity in the

Bible anywhere. You won't find the word Trinity in the Bible, yet we confess that God is a Trinity. He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And we can say that because the Bible teaches it, even if it never uses that word.

So that God is Trinity is a good and necessary consequence of what the

Bible says explicitly. And I think the concept of church membership in the

Bible is similar. We can deduce that. So now, I want to give us the biblical case for church membership.

And to do that, I want to give you six lines of evidence. Six lines of evidence for church membership in the

Bible. And the first is that the Bible uses the term members to refer to Christians within body life of the church.

The New Testament uses the word members to refer to Christians within the body life of the church.

So, Ephesians 4 .25. Ephesians 4 .25. We're going to go all over the place. You may want to turn there.

You may just want to jot it down and look at it later, but we're going to be looking at a bunch of different verses. But Ephesians 4 .25 says,

Ephesians 4 .25 says, Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. For we are members of one another.

We're members of one another. Then in Romans 12 .5, Paul says, Romans 12 .5 Paul says, And so we, the many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.

Individually members one of another. And so, the first thing I want to do, I want to acknowledge that Paul is not using the word members there in the exact same way that we would use member when talking about church members.

Rather, he's using a metaphor talking about body parts or members, like your arm or your leg is a member of your body, right?

If you're in an accident and one of those gets cut off, we say you're dismembered. That's where that comes from. And so Paul's using that metaphor.

And so, I don't want to point to this passage and say, see, Paul says member, we says member, case closed.

Rather, I'm saying that the reason we call it membership in the first place is because the church has accepted and internalized

Paul's metaphor. We've accepted and internalized his metaphor and the church has accepted and practiced this concept of belonging to one another as body parts belong to the body, as members of one another.

We've accepted that and internalized that and practiced that. And so, Paul tells the Ephesian church and Paul tells the Roman church that they're members of one another.

They belong to one another. There's a defined body and they belong to it.

And this, if you look at it in the context of these passages, particularly in Ephesian, it entails the cultivation of certain behaviors and the prohibition of other behaviors, but it's because they belong to this defined body.

And so, if you're in first century Ephesus, the question is, with whom else are you members of one another?

I mean, Ephesus is full of people at the time, they were full of people who proclaimed great is

Artemis of the Ephesians. And there's this growing number who proclaimed and confessed that Jesus is

Lord. And so, with whom did they belong? There had to be a defined whom.

With whom do you belong? And how do you know who else belongs to you? I think the answer is a defined church membership.

That's the first line of evidence there in Ephesians and Romans. Second, let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 2.

2 Corinthians chapter 2, in this passage, Paul is encouraging the church in Corinth to forgive one who, by his sin, has caused

Paul and the church pain. And he says in verse 6, 2

Corinthians 2 .6, for such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough.

He's saying, they've suffered enough, now do this. He says, the punishment by the majority.

Majority. How do you know if you have a majority? Well, you have to have the number of the whole, and then 50 % of that plus one is a majority, right?

But you have to know what the whole is before you know if you have a majority or not. And so the point is, there had to be a defined people in Corinth, in that church, a defined who's in and a defined who's out, for Paul to even be able to speak of a majority.

Now some translations, depending on what Bible translation you're using, it says many there instead of majority, because the

Greek word there can mean a great number, but I think the point still stands, because how do you know if the number is great?

How do you know if the number is many or not? Well again, you have to compare it to the whole. And so, to compare it to the whole, you have to know who the whole is.

In other words, you have to draw lines, you have to have a defined membership. Third, let's look at 1

Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, in this passage,

Paul gives instruction to the church in Corinth again, about disciplining a person there, among them, so one who's in the church, one who is sexually immoral.

So what I want to do is, I want to go through this passage in 1 Corinthians 5, and just draw out a few things, highlight a few things as it relates to how there had to have been a defined church membership.

And so, beginning in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 1 it says, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated, even among pagans.

For a man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from you.

And so, I'll draw your attention to a few things. One it says, there's one among you. And so, there's a defined you to be among, and it's contrasted with among the pagans.

And so, you see this kind of antithesis. You have the among you, that is the church, the among the pagans, that is the unbelievers.

And then he says there in verse 2, let him who has done this be removed. And so, you have to have a defined group for somebody to be removed from it.

And so, I think church membership is assumed there. Let's keep going. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit. And as if present,

I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the

Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. So, I'll pause there again, just draw your attention. It says, when you are assembled. Well, who is the you that is assembled?

And the fact that there is an assembly, how do you know if the you is fully assembled? Well, you got to know who they are, right?

And who is, who are they who are assembling? Which those who are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus. And so, this is the church, this is those who have been baptized in the name.

The ones who possess authority, power from the Lord Jesus, it says there in verse 4.

It's referring to the church. And then he says in verse 5, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh.

What you see here is church discipline. This is a classic church discipline passage, and this kind of shows the end of a church discipline process.

You never start here, but this is where it ends. If the person remains unrepentant, and it's excommunication, it's delivering him to Satan.

It is the removal that he was just talking about in verse 2 from the group. And then we see the purpose or the goal of church discipline here.

The goal is always for the purity and holiness of the church, it's for the glory of God and keeping the bride of Christ pure, but the goal is also always redemptive.

You see that in the end of verse 5, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Discipline is always towards the end goal of redemption for the person.

Never out of malice, never out of hatred. Always because we want to see the person saved, we want to see them repent.

But again, for our purposes in singing about membership, is we see one removed. There's an inside and outside.

Keep on going, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? And again, I would say, who is the lump?

There's got to be a defined whole. Skip down to verse 9. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or the swindlers, or the idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunker, swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

And again, what do we see? You see this association and kind of two -fold association.

There are associations with the world and associations with those who bear the name of brother, those who are

Christians, those who are in the church, and there's a separation there, means there's a definition there. And so I think we see a case for church membership in that.

And then in verse 12, for what have I to do with judging outsiders, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

And again, there's an inside and an outside. There are those who are inside the church and we have responsibilities there, there's authority there, there's care there, there's all sorts of things for those inside.

And how we relate to one another and how we associate with the ones in the inside.

And then there's for those who are outside, but you've got to know who's in which category or else there's confusion.

And God's not a God of confusion, God is a God of order. And then lastly in verse 13, God judges those outside, purge the evil person from you.

And so this whole passage is really about church discipline, that's not what we're talking about today, that is connected with membership.

But again, the point I want you to see there is that 1 Corinthians 5 makes it very clear that there's an inside and an outside of the church in Corinth.

And it assumes that it's public knowledge who's which, in which category, who's in and who's out.

And so I believe this passage and others assume a defined group or else these instructions really wouldn't make any sense.

And I would suggest that there's likely a defined list of those in the church.

And the reason I think that is because one, you've got to have knowledge, but it would fit with other things that we see in the

New Testament. That's the fourth line of evidence that I would present to you today. That's other defined lists in the

Bible. And so for example, we have 1 Timothy 5, we read about a list of widows who are going to be cared for materially by the church.

And these are women who Paul lays out the case for in 1 Timothy 5, they've got to meet certain criteria in order to be enrolled, and that's what it says in verse 9, it says, let a widow be enrolled.

That means put on the list so that she is cared for by the church. And then Paul gives the criteria. And so some widows are on the list and some are not.

Some are enrolled, some are not. There's this list. And so the point in going to 1

Timothy 5 is to show that the idea of a defined list is not foreign to the New Testament and to the church of the

New Testament. A list where some are on it and others are not is found.

Also, we have Revelation 21 -27, where we see that Jesus keeps a list, the

Lamb's book of life. And so when it comes to entering into the New Jerusalem, there's a clear demarcation of who's in and who's out.

And there's lists. And so the Old Testament also is full of genealogies and lists of names because it was to be clear who were

God's people and who were not. Who were God's people and who were not. So that leads us to the fifth line of evidence to point out, and that is there's always been boundaries between God's people and those who are not

God's people. There's always been boundaries. So the Old Testament, you had the sacrifices, you had circumcision, ceremonial laws, especially dietary laws that marked out

Israel as God's distinct people, distinct from the nations so that they could be alike to the nations.

And while it is true that faith and baptism mark out believers from unbelievers today,

I would argue that baptism is entry into a visible local church and that faith finds its expression in the life of a local church.

And therefore, church membership is a marker of being God's people. And then finally, the sixth line of evidence

I would give to you today is Hebrews 13, 17. Hebrews 13, 17, God's word says,

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. As those who will have to give an account, let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

What we see here is in the church leadership and submission. And leadership and submission entail a knowledge of who is leading whom, who is submitting to whom.

And the point there is it assumes some sort of organizational, defined organizational structure. It assumes that there is a body to be led, that we know who that body is.

And further, I would say from Hebrews 13, 17, as your pastor, I would point out that one day

I'm going to stand before the Lord and I'm going to give an account for the souls that God has entrusted to my care for you.

And so one, that is absolutely sobering and kind of scary to be honest. But two, if that is the case, and it is, then

I want to know for whom am I going to stand before God the Father and give an account? So this is why bloated church roles that have members who haven't darkened the door in decades, that's one of those types of situations where you have, you know, 100 people in attendance and a membership role of 600, and there's a difference of 500 people, we don't know where they are.

Thankfully that's not the case at our church, but it's the case in many places and it's dangerous because one, those people, if they've not joined themselves to another church, then they have no one keeping a watch over their souls.

When that is something that all of us need, and it must be something that we need or God wouldn't have set it up this way, right?

And then two, on the last day, there are going to be many pastors who have to give an account for souls of people they've never met.

Pastor he never met them, but he's responsible for them. And what's he going to do? Stand before God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, brighter than the noonday sun, and kind of shrug his shoulders,

I didn't know him. That is terrifying. And so to the extent that that is due to his own neglect, it's his own fault, but to the extent that it's due to a congregation's unwillingness to practice accurate and meaningful membership, that would be unfair.

And so I would ask you, when I stand before God the Father to give an account for First Baptist Church Travel Trust, help me to do so with joy and not with groaning, by us practicing meaningful membership.

And I have an application for us on that point that I'll return to at the end. Thankfully, we're not in the situation where we have a bloated church role.

Our challenge is somewhat, or slightly different, and we'll return to that at the end.

And so what we see here are six lines of evidence demonstrating that church membership follows by good and necessary consequence, what the

Bible explicitly teaches about the people of God. And so with that case for membership in mind,

I want us to look at a few benefits of church membership, and then how is it practiced.

And so benefits of church membership, again I'm going to borrow from Mark Dever here, and say one, assurance of salvation.

Now to be clear, I'm not saying here that anyone is saved by virtue of being on a church membership role.

That's not the case. Salvation is by faith alone. It is the gift of God's grace. But if you're an active, meaningful member of a church, you're going to participate in the life of a church, worshiping

God, hearing the Word preached, hearing the Gospel applied to you, receiving the assurance of forgiveness, like we do in the

Gospel Focus each week. You're going to participate in the ordinances, you're going to serve in the body and be served in the body.

And all of this will work to assure you of your salvation, and to disabuse you of any false assurances.

We have assurance of salvation in the church. Two is edification, being built up. In the church, you're going to be built up by the spiritual gifts of others.

And you're going to build others up by using your spiritual gifts. So we have edification as a benefit of membership in the body.

Three, we have participation in the people of God. The church is the visible expression of the people of God on earth.

And in the church, you will join with those who are advancing the kingdom so that things on earth will be as they are in heaven.

And so you participate in the mission of God with the people of God in the church. And you receive all the blessings that are entailed therein.

And then fourth, appropriate for today, the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a benefit of church membership.

So the church supper is one of Jesus' appointed means to strengthen your soul.

We are nourished in the Lord's Supper. However, the supper isn't given broadly, but it's given specifically to the church.

It's a church ordinance intended for members of the church. And so our practice here at First Baptist is to welcome to the table all who are members of this church, or who are members of another church of like faith, or those who are actively seeking, maybe kind of in between church membership, those who are actively seeking church membership.

And in this way, dining with God in the supper is a benefit to your soul, a benefit of church membership.

Now let me ask, what does membership look like practically in the life of the church? That is, what can you, if you join

First Baptist, what can you expect of others, and what will others expect of you? So here's what

I tell prospective members when I meet with them prior to joining our church. I say, you can expect one another community.

And so there's a lot of instruction in the New Testament about how we're to interact with one another in the church, we're to love one another, serve one another, submit to one another, forgive one another, forbear with one another, strive to be of one mind with one another, encourage one another, bear one another's burdens, spur one another on to love and good deeds.

The New Testament is full of these commands and full of these instructions for us to live with one another as we follow

Christ together. And so we want to be the type of church community that obeys these commands. And so this list that I just gave you, it presupposes that our lives are going to be intertwined, we're going to be spending time with one another, we're going to be pursuing projects with one another, serving together in the church and in the community, working together, worshiping together, and doing all of that while keeping these commands.

And we're going to need to keep those commands when we're doing things together because if you do anything with anybody, you know you're going to need to forgive somebody, you know you're going to need to love somebody, you're going to need to forbear with somebody.

Second thing that you can expect is a community that fights sin together. I want

First Baptist to be the type of place where it's hard to make a shipwreck of your life. That is, if you're going to go off the deep end, you're going to have to do it on purpose.

You're going to have to climb over some people who are trying to stand in the way and say no, don't go down that road. And what

I mean by that is usually nobody wakes up and just ruins their life with one decision.

That happens when people make small compromises along the way. And sin, it grows.

Remember what we read in James a few weeks ago that sin starts as desire in the heart. He's enticed by the desires of his flesh and then it grows.

It gives birth to sin. Sin when it's full grown brings forth death. Sin grows. And so what we want to do is when we see it in one another's lives, in the smaller forms, we want to encourage that person to turn there, stop there, repent now, don't let it get any bigger because sin will devour you.

So out of love for one another, we want to be the type of community who will see those first compromises and step in and do something before it ruins their life.

We want to be a community where it's okay and expected that if you see something in someone's life, you say something to them kindly, graciously, lovingly, because we desire their good and their repentance never with a sense of self -righteousness or superiority or malice, but it would be unloving not to.

Because think about it. If you saw somebody's house on fire, what would you do? You would knock on the door, get them out, warn them, hey, the back of your house is on fire.

It's getting ready to get really bad. In the same way, if you see someone playing with the fire of sin, we need to warn them so that they can get out.

Proverbs says, can a man carry fire near his chest and not get burnt? The answer is no. So sometimes we need somebody to say, brother, put the fire down.

You're going to get burnt. And this takes humility. It takes humility for the one who's actually saying something to someone, because nobody wants to be that guy.

It takes humility to receive that kind of warning or correction. But we have the mind of Christ.

Philippians 2. It's all about humility. And we have the Spirit of God. We can do this.

So let's fight sin together, because we're members of one another. And therefore, because we're members of one another, we belong to one another, and we have an interest in each other's holiness.

Because your sin never affects just you. It affects everybody you're connected with. And in church membership, you're covenantally connected with everybody else in the church.

Therefore, your sin affects others, and my sin affects you. So let's fight sin together.

The third thing I tell perspective members is that they can expect care for their soul. So I aim to take

Hebrews 13, 17 seriously, and to keep watch over your soul, so you can expect me to care how you're doing.

How are you doing spiritually? How are you doing in your family? How's your prayer life? How's your

Bible reading? How's your fighting sin going? You can expect me to ask about those things, to listen to your struggles, to be there when you're in hard times, to pray for you.

Now I'll be honest, the nuts and bolts about how to do this well, I'm still learning. But I'm committed to learning.

Because I want you to be cared for well by your pastor. Because that's how God has set it up, Hebrews 13, 17.

And then lastly, I tell perspective members a few things we expect of members as it relates to church life together.

The first one of those is what you're doing right here, coming to Lord's Day worship. Hebrews 10, 25 says, let us not neglect meeting together as is the habit of some.

We don't neglect the public Lord's Day worship. When we set that apart, we expect, and our church covenant expects, you know, it lays it out there, that we sustain the worship of the church.

So we want you to be here at Lord's Day worship. And we do other things, we'll do, you know, we'll do prayer meetings, we'll do Wednesday night services, we'll do

Sunday school, we'll do all sorts of other things that we think are beneficial and good. But what I tell people in members, kind of that membership conversation, is nobody's going to come track you down if you don't show up on Wednesday night.

But if we don't see you for a few weeks on a Sunday morning, we're going to, not that we're going to come track you down and say, where you been, you okay?

Because it's good for your soul, and you're responsible before God to come and worship Him. You owe that to God.

And so we do expect attendance at Lord's Day worship. Another thing is service in the church. We want you to serve the body in some way.

God has gifted you spiritually for the building up of the body, and we want you to be a part of that.

Our nominating committee, meeting tomorrow night, in order to try to get people, you know, get people in the right places.

They're going to come ask you about serving in certain places. There's a church service questionnaire in the back that most of you have filled out over the last couple of weeks of where, you know, you're interested in serving.

And I thank you for filling those out. If you haven't had a chance to do that, please do. We want to know, where is it that you can serve the body?

Because nobody is to be a part of the church and not serve.

And I know we're different ages and stages of life, and that's going to look different. But there's some way for you to serve the body in your current age and stage of life.

And we'd love to work with you to find out what that place is. The other thing I tell prospective members is giving.

We want cheerful support of the ministry of the church. And then lastly, holy living.

This goes back to what we were talking about fighting sin together. But the expectation is that we're trying to obey

Christ. We know we're not going to do it perfectly. We're going to need to repent often. But we want repentance.

We want people following Christ and obeying His word. That's what we're aiming for is holy living. So let me end with a few applications.

First question would be, do you need to join a membership here at First Baptist Church? Is that your next step is to join a membership?

Or maybe it's not here, but it's somewhere. Do you need to join a membership to a local church? There's a lot of good Bible preaching, gospel proclaiming,

Jesus -loving churches in our area. I'm partial to this one. I want you to join here.

But for the good of your soul, I want you to be a member of a church somewhere. So is that what you need to do?

If it is here, I'd encourage you to set up a time for us to meet. Our process at First Baptist currently is somebody wanting to join, we're going to meet together,

I want to hear your story, how you came to know the Lord, tell you a little bit about our church, give you a chance to ask any questions, and then bring you before the church to affirm membership.

At some point in the future, we're probably going to hold some periodic membership classes. But at this point, we have these membership conversations, this is the first step.

And so, balls in your court, let's set up that meeting. Second, if you're already a member, what's your next step?

Do you need to step in and serve in a particular area? Is there someone you need to forgive in the church?

To walk in unity? Is there a sin that you need to repent of?

Do you need to be more faithful in attendance, in worship? What's your next step?

Whatever it is, the exhortation to you this morning is to do it. And then third, there's one application for our church at large, and that is we need an accurate and official membership role, and currently we don't have one.

And so what we do have is a number of different lists, but we don't have an official membership role.

And I think that's because we had some records that were lost when

Anne, our previous church secretary, passed away. We lost some records. She had a lot on her laptop.

We were never able to get access to that laptop. And then her daughter, who was going to be able to get us access, she moved overseas.

Anyway, we lost some files. What we have, we have an old membership book. We have some newer on -the -computer lists, but we don't have one kind of official membership role.

And so here's a proposal, an application proposal, that I intend to make at our August 27th members meeting.

There will be a members meeting immediately after the service on August 27th. And so Kathy and I have put together from the various lists that we have what we believe is an accurate list of our membership.

The problem is it's not official. And so what I would like to do is distribute this list on August the 27th at our members meeting, and then give ample time over the following several months for the congregation to review that list.

Is there anybody on that list? Is there anybody not on the list that should be, is what we're asking.

I think we have it fairly accurate, but I want to give you an opportunity. Is there anybody on there that shouldn't be?

I don't think that's the case. Or not on there that should be. And then if you know of someone that's still technically a member, but they haven't been here in a long time, then me and the deacons, we will make every effort to contact them and invite them back or maybe find out that they've joined somewhere else or see if they still desire membership.

And then we come back with the revised list of people we've added to that November members meeting.

And at that point, I would propose that we vote to affirm that list as our official membership role.

We need a defined list so we know who's in and who's out, right? We've seen that in the scriptures today. And so then we just keep accurate records going forward and make steps so that if we lose a computer or something or something happens to someone, that we don't end up in the same boat in the future.

I think this will help our congregation know who is in and who is out. It will help our congregation know for whom are you responsible for as a fellow member of one another.

It will help me know for whom I'm going to give an account to God for one day on the last day.

And it will help us together to honor God by caring for His people. And so that's coming up at the members meeting on August 27th.

If you have any questions about that, concerns about that, please let me know, let the deacons know.

But I think we need to find a way, and I think this might be our best way to do it, but we need to find a way forward to knowing who's in and who's out here in our church so that we can honor

God in that way. Let's pray together. Our Father, I thank You for the church, broadly speaking, those whom

You have called to salvation in Christ in all times, in all places.

And Father, I thank You for this specific church, First Baptist Traverse Rest. Lord, I pray that we will be a one another community, that we'll love one another, serve one another, care for one another, forgive one another, forbear with one another, build one another up, be of one mind with one another.

Lord, help us in that regard. Help us to fight sin together. Help us to live holy.

And help us know who's in and who's out. And Lord, I pray that You'll build Your church.

Jesus promised that He'd build His church, and we pray that You'd build this one. Not for our own namesake, but for the glory of King Jesus.

That the gospel might continue for decades, centuries to come, to be proclaimed here in Traverse Rest.

So that You will receive, as Psalm 96 says, the glory that is due Your name. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus.