Ask The Pastor: Can people who actively pursue a sinful lifestyle become members of a church?
In the last blog I talked about the balance between loving people while also protecting the purity of the church. In this blog, I’m going to look at this from a different perspective: church membership. Can a person who is actively, blatantly pursuing a sinful lifestyle still become a member of a church? Or what should be done about a current member who is found to be involved in some sort of blatant sinful lifestyle?
Some scenarios to think about: Sam and Tina are dating, have a child together, and are living together. They want to become members of the church. Can they? Bill and Henry are in a gay relationship. They start attending the church and want to become members. Can they?
First off, we need to remember that we are ALL sinners. Both the Old and the New Testament make this very clear, with Romans 3:23 being the most prominent verse. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I am a sinner. You are a sinner. Sam, Tin, Bill, and Henry are sinners. We all are!
However, there’s a big difference between sinners who have put their faith in Jesus Christ and are actively trying to resist sin in their life and sinners that are actively pursuing the sin in their life. This is an important line that needs to be drawn in the church when it comes to allowing a person to get involved in a church beyond just attending. More on that in a moment.
We need to understand the purpose of church membership. As I teach in the membership class, there’s no verse in the Bible that says “thou shout become a church member.” However there are a number verses in the New Testament that point to individual churches having some sort of system of knowing who was in and who was out of the church. They had to know so that the leaders of the church would know who to lead and protect. It was also used in the context of providing aid to those in need. People in the church are called to love “one another.” The only way to know the “anothers” in the church is if there was a system for who was in and who was not in. I won’t go into all the verses about this but if you would like me to write a post about it sometime please let me know.
In the New Testament we see church members (using my above description of members) actively involved in church life. The “in” folks were fellowshipping, encouraging each other, praying for each other, and involved in the ministering inside and outside of the church. The “in” group helped make important decisions about the leaders and direction of the church (for example, choosing the deacons in Acts 6). Those that were not “in” were not part of these major aspects of church life.
With this in mind, it is important for people that are members of a church to be Christians. The church, as the hands and feet of Jesus, has to be people who follow Jesus. So one of the first rules for church membership is that the person needs to have put their faith in Jesus. The fancy term for this is “regenerate church membership” and this is a foundational part of Southern Baptist churches.
But even more, given the duties of members of a church (see above), it is vital that these members be people who are not actively engaging in a sinful lifestyle. As we all have likely experienced at some point in life, it is hard to follow Jesus when you are primarily following sin.
Jesus recognized this, which is why he tells people how to engage with others in the church that have sin in their life (Matthew 18). The church doesn’t just ignore the sin, they address it with the goal of repentance. But if the person does not repent, the issue is eventually brought to the church body and the person is removed from the church. (In my opinion, the language points to removing them as a member of the church, not completely ignoring them and pretending they don’t exist).
Now, having said all that, let’s go back to the original question. Can people who are involved in blatant sin become members of a church? The answer is no way!
Why? Because if someone involved in blatant sin applied for membership and was accepted, the church would have to immediately begin the church discipline process that is outlined in Matthew 18. If a person is already a member and it is discovered they are involved in sin, then the Matthew 18 process will either lead them to repentance or loss of membership.
So it is impractical to allow blatant sinners to become church members. They just aren’t ready. Can they still attend church? Sure, as long as their lifestyle isn’t causing others to stumble. It is good for them to sit under good, biblical preaching. But in no way should they be brought in as members and think that they don’t have to deal with the sin in their own lives.