Abstract: Dean Polk points out five reasons why church membership can be a powerful witness in majority-Muslim contexts. They are individualism, communalism, the timidity of professing believers, the comfort of having a spiritual family, and the temptation for one’s commitment to the local church to be replaced by commitment to an organization. Church membership draws a clear line between the church and the world and thereby clarifies what it means to belong to Christ and his people.
Last spring, over a decade after commissioning us to move overseas, our sending church in the U.S. voted my wife and me out of membership. That’s because we’re active members of our church on the field. Meanwhile, our oldest son was recently baptized and brought into membership in our local church in Central Asia, but not before he talked with a pastor, went through a membership class, read our covenant and statement of faith, did a membership interview, and was provisionally voted in by the members prior to his baptism. And all this took place in a majority-Muslim context.
Both episodes evidence a biblical and intentional approach to church membership. It’s an approach that seems to be growing in our day—and not just among Americans. It’s also true among Africans and Russians, and surely among many others.
My aim here is not to construct an argument for the importance of church membership or to take a position on how formally or informally it might be practiced in a given context. 1Instead, I simply want to provide five reasons why church membership is not only biblical (which is most important) but also a powerful witness in majority-Muslim contexts.
1. Because of Individualism
I recently visited some close believing friends in Central Asia, many of them former Muslims. As we discussed covenant relationships among believers, they began to recount the communal nature of their childhoods—in families, in neighborhoods, among friends. But they all agreed those days are long gone. Their peers no longer think first of the group. They’re out for themselves.
These believers’ experience is consistent with what we see across the world today, and not just in the West. Individualism has come to the East. People want to be accountable to themselves alone. But the gospel aims to transform this self-orientation from the inside out. Church membership is the practical outworking of this transformation, where we commit and submit not only to the Lord but also to one another.
2. Because of Communalism
A few years ago, I visited a Muslim friend in his home village. We did the normal stuff—sauna, trip to the natural spring, copious portions of food his mother made with fresh vegetables from his father’s garden. By day three, my friend was looking for something to keep us fed and entertained. Then the thought came to him: My neighbor’s cousin is getting married today. “Let’s go to the wedding,” he said.
Maybe you can picture my protests as I imagined a typical American wedding. I hadn’t been invited. I didn’t have a gift. I had no appropriate clothes. But that didn’t matter. The wedding was at a massive banquet hall full of round tables, loud music, and unending streams of young men carrying in pots of steaming-hot boiled meat. The more people there were, the more opportunities to be hospitable and, thus, the more honor to the family of the groom. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know the family or if they didn’t know me.
When we work with Muslim peoples who are so instinctively hospitable, so instinctively inclusive, it can seem countercultural (and indeed it is) to draw lines, even between families, and say, in effect, ”These people are in; you are not.” But we do this because the church is a new spiritual family. That bond is determined by rebirth, not blood. Sure, drawing those lines can be tough. But it’s critical for the integrity of the gospel that the world understand who is a Christian. There needs to be a distinction between those who belong to the family and those who don’t. When that line is blurred, it confuses believers and unbelievers alike and compromises the witness of the gospel.
3. Because of Secret Believers
Genuine Christians sometimes hide their faith from their community because of safety concerns. It takes wisdom to know when to challenge the fearful to entrust their well-being to the Lord and go public with their faith, or, on the other hand, when to be patient with them as their faith is largely hidden from the community. Most missionaries in Muslim contexts know professing believers who are too timid.
A robust practice of church membership can patiently remind timid believers that until they identify openly with other Christians—first through baptism and then through gathering regularly with other believers—they are in a sense still “in the world,” separate from God’s people. In this way, church membership gently urges them to take steps of faith.
4. Because Not-Yet Believers Need to Know They Will Have a Spiritual Family
For many in Muslim communities, the decision to follow Christ has painful societal consequences. Some will be shamed. Others will lose jobs or endure threats to their lives. Their families may disown them. In the face of these painful realities, young believers, and even not-yet believers, need to know that there’s a group of people who will receive them into their own spiritual family.
They need to know that they will be thought of as “one of us” and treated as “our people.” Church membership makes this kind of statement—these are the people who are in; others are out. And if you are in, you are fully in. You are part of a new family of brothers and sisters, so we are going to show up for you, come what may.
5. Because Local Church Membership Is More Important Than Organizational Membership
Maybe you’ve heard this story before. A national friend comes to faith. They begin to bear fruit, serve in their local church, and share the gospel. Then some well-intentioned Western worker swoops in with an offer to bring them “on staff” if they will fulfill the ministry plans of the worker’s organization. For many new believers, the opportunity for economic stability while doing kingdom work is an offer too good to pass up.
But many times, their new organization’s goals begin to crowd out their commitment to the local church. I’ve seen it enough that I can almost predict it. Often the national believer deprioritizes ministry in the church, evangelism through the church, and accountability to the church. Sometimes attendance at that local church wanes. I’m not suggesting that hiring local believers is automatically a bad decision, but we do need to be on guard against this drift.11 . The tendency to drift from commitment to the local church is something we as missionaries must consider ourselves, particularly since our livelihood comes from our missions organization. We too need to prioritize the life and ministry of our local churches through meaningful membership.
Let’s Be Church Centered
There was a time when every corner of the Muslim world was a pioneering work because there were no local churches. Thankfully, that’s much less common now. In most places where Islam still dominates, the way forward is to invest in existing local churches, encouraging them toward health and, as an overflow of that health, toward reproduction. Taking church membership seriously works toward that end, so let’s give ourselves to it and lead those we love to do the same.
