Membership matters

I wrestled a little before I started to write this response to Dr. R. Scott Clark. I consider Dr. Clark a brother in Christ despite our disagreements over doctrinal issues. After thinking it through, I decided that his three posts on “churchless evangelicals” demanded an answer. Dr. Clark is one of the loudest and most widely read advocates of what I consider to be an extreme and overly narrow definition of “Reformed” as well as the church. Dr. Clark’s arguments carry some weight in Christian circles and in my humble opinion as one without any letters designating academic achievement after my name, I find much of what Dr. Clark has written to be incorrect and quite frankly slandering the witness of millions of Christians who don’t subscribe to his theories on ecclesiology. I also recognize that in the big picture, I am kind of a small fish and not many people care what I think about what someone with academic credentials and published books and papers has written. But I felt that a response was still warranted. Trying to engage via comments on his blog was not feasible. It is hard to carry on a conversation in a blog comment format, I hate it when people go to blogs and post enormous comments, the comment section is for comments not for comprehensive responses, and quite frankly Dr. Clark has some followers who tend to respond to comments with vitriol that is unhelpful and often they obscure the argument with lengthy diatribes. So here is the next part of my response to Dr. R. Scott Clark and his post “On Churchless Evangelicals”.

In my first post, The fruits of hyper-confessionalism, I dealt with Dr. Clark’s assertion that churches that don’t baptize infants are not valid churches. Now that I have dealt with that assertion, I want to move on to the rest of Dr. Clark’s arguments in “On churchless evangelicals”. The next area to examine has to do with the requirements for and the necessity of church membership that Dr. Clark lays out.

The glaring issue in Dr. Clark’s argument is a matter of definition: Who or what is the church?

Is the church an organization? Is church “membership”, formalized in lists, a Biblical precedent and command? Was it intended that we have a hierarchy in the church, with professionalized clergy, membership lists and all of the accompanying issues that go along with those features? Is that what we see in the New Testament?

The problem boils down to this. Dr. Clark is linking a visible expression of the church with the institutionalized Christianity of 2009, or at least the nascent institutional Christianity of the 16th and 17th century when the Reformed confessions were written. In other words, a highly liturgical and organized church that has requirements for “membership” and follows the Reformed confessions is the purest form of the visible church we see. But is that what we see in the Word? The Bible speaks of the church in several ways, both in terms of a local, visible gathering of believers (and there is a big difference between that and the formalized, institutionalized flavor of church we see today) as well as the more broad, general use of the term which indicates the Bride of Christ, all of the elect in every place, at every time. But to Dr. Clark, these two aspects of the church are for all intents and purposed inseparable and to try to view them separately is foolishness.

“It’s easy to show the foolishness of speaking about the church invisible in the way that so many do, as if it’s possible to be an “invisible” Christian, as if it’s possible to be a part of the church catholic without being part of the church visible and militant.”

Let’s examine some of Dr. Clark’s arguments in favor of the preeminence of the visible expression of the church.

“The evidence is overwhelming that the apostolic and early post-apostolic church was highly organized. For example, there is positive evidence of record keeping (membership lists) in the NT church. The problem in the daily distribution of bread in Acts 6:1 assumes some sort of record keeping of eligible widows. In 1 Timothy 5.9-16 Paul speaks explicitly about a list of names of Christian widows who were eligible for financial assistance from the Church. He even lays out the qualifications to be on the list. If the Church kept such lists for financial aid, can we reasonably assume that these widows were not on a membership roll? Moreover we cannot help but notice that again Paul’s instructions regarding widows presupposes some sort of organized visible body of Christ who administered this aid to its members.”

Talk about an enormous leap. Being aware of local Christian widows in need, perhaps even writing their names down to ensure they are not forgotten, equates to church membership with a formal admission process, new member classes, etc.? Dr. Clark appeals to Scripture to support his claim, so let’s look in turn at the Scripture Dr. Clark cites. First Acts 6:1…

Acts 6:1
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

OK, so from this we are supposed to see formal church membership? We don’t see anything about lists, about membership, about new member classes, anything at all that indicates membership. Hmm, maybe the next Scripture he quoted will shed more light on the issue…

1 Timothy 5: 9-16
9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 10 and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. 11 But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry 12 and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. 13 Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. 14 So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 15 For some have already strayed after Satan. 16 If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows.

Is it just me or do we still not see membership lists anywhere but in Dr. Clark’s parenthetical comment? What of those who are not widows? Where is the evidence that those who are not widows are on any lists? Dr. Clark asks the question: “If the Church kept such lists for financial aid, can we reasonably assume that these widows were not on a membership roll?” . Let me turn that around and ask a more realistic question: Just because we see a list of widows, in a unique situation because of their need for support, so that they are not forgotten in the daily distribution can we assume that anyone else is on a list when the Bible makes no mention of it? In fact, we see that we should NOT record younger widows, “enroll” them on the lists (v. 11). So were young widows not members of the church? Of course not. In an age without email and blackberrys or telephones, it makes sense for the church to write down a list of widows who receive daily food distributions to make sure no one got missed and perhaps to ensure that only those who have a legitimate need get fed. But to take that and make the leap that we are required to have a “membership” in a local body is extremist and inaccurate. When Dr. Clark breathlessly asserts that : “The evidence is overwhelming that the apostolic and early post-apostolic church was highly organized.” , I have to raise my hand and ask where the overwhelming evidence is? Is that the overwhelming evidence, lists of widows older than 60 who are eligible to receive aid=a mandate and requirement for Christians to be on the membership rolls of a local church?

Reading further into his argument…

“When Jesus instituted the keys of the kingdom (Matt 16) he gave them to officers (apostles) to whom he gave spiritual authority to bind and loose. When he instituted church discipline he authorized particular congregations to confront sin, and to take steps to correct it (Matt 18). It is not possible to “tell it to the church” if, in this instance, “church” means “the church considered in its invisible aspect. The background to the word “church” there is the OT term for the visible covenant assembly gathered in formal session.”

That sounds dangerously like mormonism, with authority and keys passed on through apostolic succession. I thought we had done away with a professional priesthood in the church. More…

“To whom were the gospels written? They were written to local congregations in particular places. To whom were the epistles written? They were written to particular congregations in particular places. How does one write an epistle directly to the church of all times and places? They are God’s inspired, infallible, inerrant Word, but that Word was given by the Spirit, through human authors, in a particular time and place. The Word speaks to the church of all times and places but it does so from a a particular time and place. The only way to hear that Word, in its original setting, was to be in a congregation.”

Even that is foolishness. Were the Gospels written to local congregations? Luke is addressed to Theophilus, an individual. I am not Theophilus, so does that mean Luke (and Acts) don't apply to me? Mark and Matthew are not written to any particular audience. John was written, according to John 20: 30-31, that we might believe. Does that make sense if it was written to the believers in a local church? I suppose there are some historical evidences or early church traditions that support that idea that I an unaware of , but looking at what the text says, I can't see that the Gospels were written specifically for a local church body.

It is true that the epistles were written to particular local bodies, often local bodies with particular issues that needed to be addressed like the Judaizer issue in the church in Galatia. Paul didn’t have a blog where he could jot down his teaching and get comments and questions from the church throughout the world. But the teaching, while mailed to a local body and addressing particular problems, has universal implication and application. As far as this question: “How does one write an epistle directly to the church of all times and places?”, well this is how you do that:

1 Corinthians 1: 1-3
1:1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul writes 1 Corinthians to the church in Corinth as the recipient of the letter but also to all Christians everywhere, “together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. I assume that Dr. Clark is familiar with 1 Corinthians 1, so I can only assume that he either intentionally ignored that intro when he stated dogmatically that it is unthinkable that the epistles were written to the church everywhere for all time or he is so wedded to his church traditions that he cannot see what Paul plainly wrote here.

In my zeal to show where this sort of thinking is wrongheaded, it may be taken to mean that I see no place at all for a visible gathering of the Body. Is there a visible church? Or course there is. Is that where much of the teaching takes place, where the body gathers for prayer, for the breaking of bread and for fellowship? Of course, and praise God for that gathering! Does that fact, taken in light of the Scriptural evidence in places like Acts 2:42, lead one inexorably to assert that only in a highly structured, organized church with membership lists, paid clergy and adherence to a 17th century confession do we see a valid expression of a 1st century church? Hardly. I would argue the opposite, the more formalized, the more institutionalized, the more centralized and hierarchical the church has become now and throughout the ages, the more mischief we see and the less the church looks like the gathering of the Body and more like a civic organization with church trappings. That is where Dr. Clark and many other champions of institutional Christianity stumble, they cannot get past their own church traditions and because of that they assume that their model of the local church is the only valid church expression, and indeed is the properly assembled New Testament form despite any evidence to support it and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately, that bit of misapplication has even greater implications in Dr. Clark’s overall thesis regarding the value of church membership. That is where I want to look next now that I have set the table with Dr. Clark’s “overwhelming evidence” of highly organized church membership.