One of the most important parts of life is to be connected. There are numerous dimensions to ‘being connected’ that enrich our lives. Two of those dimensions that I would like to touch on this week have to do with church membership and baptism.
I will have to be honest with you that writing about these two things seems a little strange for me. I did not grow up in a church so membership seems a bit foreign, personally. I also was not familiar with baptism until my adult years. From my youthful and distant vantage point, these things seemed more like ‘religious wallpaper’ for churchy people rather than something important.
However, now I see church membership and baptism in a whole new way. They are all about being connected. Both are about the one being connected to the whole.
Baptism is a beautiful illustration of the person who comes to faith in Christ (identifying with Christ in His death and in His resurrection to new life) becoming part of the body of Christ. That is why we say he or she is baptized into the church. The believer joins the family of God, the universal Church. They proclaim that Christ is not only Lord, but they proclaim that He is their Lord. It is a bold, yet humble, proclamation for the awesomeness of God’s work in their lives.
Membership is a similar expression. As a result of baptism, expressing their participation in the universal church, the believer then connects themselves to a local expression of the ‘body of Christ’. Membership is a formal expression of both the believer and the local body of Christ that we are committed to living out our faith in connection with other believers. We commit ourselves to allowing God to use ‘the family’ to encourage us, to comfort us, to exhort us, to confront us and to transform us.
I would encourage every person who has entrusted their life to Christ to get baptized and to formally pursue membership in a healthy church. If Quest can be that for you, let us know and we will help you accomplish either or both.