I recently heard a series of sermons about the scriptural basis for local church membership. The best one can say about this is that the Church is described as Christ’s body and bride. Membership is a sign of commitment, much as marriage is a sign of commitment to the relationship with another person.
However, historically membership would have been difficult. First, lists of members would have been perilously fraught for members in a time of persecution by Jewish, governmental and secular leadership. This is certainly true even today in many countries. Second, we know many early churches were house churches (Rom. 16.5) and a combination of these seemed to be described as the church of Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi and so on. It wouldn’t have made any sense to have membership in a house church. Elders and other leaders were appointed but not there’s no limitation on who could vote for or approve them.
The first scriptural passage that a pastor used to describe the scriptural basis for membership is 1 Timothy 5.9 “A widow is to be put on the list only if she is more than sixty years old…” If the list is meant to be a membership roll, then all widows less than sixty years old or childless or infirm and unable to help others are excluded. Also widows who were married twice or more. Paul is talking about the church’s support of widows, not membership. He gives some reasons that certain widows should be able to find support from other places than the church, primarily the widow’s family. [If you continue to read past verse 9, you’ll find some stereotypical and anachronistic reasoning for excluding young widows.]
Other verses used to support membership were exclusionary. One described people who used to be part of the fellowship and are now following the Antichrist. Other Pauline passages suggest a person should be removed from the church and a majority of the fellowship should cast out a rebellious person. There was only one verse in a positive frame but membership was not a requirement to encourage one another, serve one another, be hospitable and so on.
It is illogical to use exclusionary principles to prove inclusion. Being not excluded from the fellowship does not mean you’re automatically included. Not not-A does not equal A. Not-A could be B or C or D… as in not being non-reptilian doesn’t make you reptilian; you could be not mammalian, not insect, not crustacean, etc. So “Not not-A” equals not-B or not-C or not-D…When it’s a non-binary system, we don’t know what not being excluded means: Are you included? Are you associated? What other criteria might there be? In the 1 Timothy passage, just being eligible to be on the list does not put you on the list. You could be eligible and still not on the list because you’re not part of the house church or the regional church or you have no desire to be on the list (you have other means of support) or you live in a different era reading this when that particular church no longer exists.
The heart of the series seemed to rest on this “list.” As I said, historically it would have been dangerous for a persecuted people to keep these kind of documents around. Definitely, the exclusion of young women—widows, single (given Paul’s reasoning) or not—from the list is not a practice any local church emulates today. Paul sets a really high bar for inclusion on this list in 1 Timothy 5. Dare any church to be hard-hearted in this manner.
