Church Membership Should Be Based on Faith

R. Scott Clark recently published a case for confessional church membership. Confessional church membership is when a requirement for becoming a member of local church entails the applicant affirming agreement with the church’s doctrinal conviction, which in the case of historic Reformed churches can be quite extensive. I was in the midst of leading a new members call at my church when Clark published the essay, which combined with my past focus on the topic (here at Reformation 21; here in the EPC’s Westminster Society Journal; here on the blog), piqued my interest.

Clark’s argument turns on three points. First, that local church membership is a biblical idea and that the elders of the local church are tasked with overseeing admission into this membership. He has my full agreement on this. Second, that in the early church and among many of the historic Reformed churches there was an extensive catechetical process for new members far more intensive than the normal Reformed approach today, and that this membership process culminated in the catechumans confessing (i.e. reciting and affirming) the creeds/confessions of the church. I grant that this occurred and was often the formal standard, though I am skeptical how frequently this really happened.

These two points by themselves do not make the case that local churches should practice confessional church membership, which leads to Clark’s third point. He argues from an extended quotation from Idzerd van Dellen and Martin Monsma, which includes this key point: “It should be plain however that a church, if its members are admitted without confessing the Reformed fundamentals, cannot remain Reformed… A Church which does not require of its members that they agree with its doctrinal tenets opens the doors to those who advocate false doctrines; heresy is bound to enter in, and eventually modernism may even predominate.” Clark does not elaborate on this point, only affirms it.

This third point is pragmatic and makes an unsubstantiated assertion, namely that admitting into membership people who don’t affirm the church’s doctrine will inevitably lead to the church departing from its Reformed moorings and tolerating heresy. This does not follow; as long as a church’s officers are required to sincerely affirms its doctrine and ensure its teaching and practices align with that doctrine the church will remain Reformed. There is also a wide difference between admitting someone into Reformed membership who may be Baptistic or Methodistic in conviction and admitting a heretic. And just because someone who doesn’t hold the church’s doctrine is admitted into membership does not mean that they are permitted to teach or promote beliefs contrary to the church’s position. Nor does it mean that the promotion of heresy (distinguished from merely holding a belief) within a church is something that the officers are obligated to tolerate or are helpless to address. The practical concern about the drift of the church’s doctrine and practice is a legitimate one, but it is ordinarily secured through the faithfulness of the church’s officers.

Membership in the local church is a manifestation of the believer’s membership in Jesus. If someone is a member of Christ they should be welcomed to be a member of his church. My position and the practice of my church is that church membership is open to anyone who has faith in Jesus and is living as his follower. We understand that to mean that the potential member i) has made a sincere profession of faith in Jesus [acknowledging that they are a sinner in need of savior, that Jesus by his death and resurrection provides this salvation, and that they trust Christ and his work alone for their salvation]; ii) can affirm the core doctrines of the Christian faith as expressed in the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds; iii) and is living a life of repentance, and is willing to submit to the oversight of our church leadership in the discipline that comes with the Christian life. This roughly lines up with what Belgic Confession 29, one of Clark’s confessional standards, says are the marks of the true Christian.