What is a healthy church member

Thabiti's chapter on A healthy Church Member is Gospel Saturated is worth the price of the book on its own.

Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:

"The gospel is not only news for a perishing world, it is the message that forms, sustains and animates the church. Apart from the gospel the church has nothing to say..."

"The gospel is absolutely vital to a vibrant, joyous, persevering, hopeful, and healthy Christian and Christian church"

He goes on helpfully to talk about how we become gospel saturated members.

Is Church membership Biblical?

Having grown up in circles where every church had a membership I wasn't aware this was such an issue, but it is. Do churches need memberships? What purpose do they serve? Aren't they just exclusive? There is no biblical evidence for church memberships, is there?

We need to recognise that our world is in many ways very different from the New Testament world. People today are more mobile and move much more frequently, this can lead to shallow, non-Biblical ties to local Churches which are unhelpful for both church and individual. The New Testament assumes strong caring, loving ties between church members.

Whilst membership isn’t mentioned explicitly in the New Testament, its principals seem to be inherent in what we know of the church in Acts and the Epistles. Believers clearly identified themselves with, and committed themselves to the local church becoming participating members and ministers in it (Acts 11:26, Romans 16).

That is not saying their was a formal membership or a list or roll, but that there was a commitment. People couldn't just take themselves off to another church because there wasn't one.