Earlier tonight, I attended a meeting of the Triangle J Critical Incident Stress Management Team. One of our discussion topics for the meeting focused on how to address team members who have consistently failed to attend meetings. This becomes a liability concern for our team when deciding whether to use these team members to provide CISM services. We have no way of being assured that a non-attending member will perform services in accordance with team protocols and at a level of expected proficiency. As we discussed these issues, I thought about how they directly correlate with problems with church membership. Just as our CISM team does not want an inactive member to potentially harm the team’s reputation, neither should the church desire for inactive members to damage the church’s reputation in the community. So, what should we do about inactive membership? It was interesting to hear our members’ responses to this question. One response in particular caught my attention – a team member recounted his experience with another organization’s creative means of addressing inactive membership. He said that, when he became a member of this particular organization, they presented him with several form letters to sign. Each of these letters was addressed to himself and signed by himself. A couple of them were letters noting recent absences at their regular meetings and reminding him of the commitment that he made when he joined the organization. A final letter was a notice that he was being removed from the membership due to his inactivity. He said that he thought that this was highly unusual when he signed the letters. He didn’t understand the significance of the letters until he began neglecting attendance at meetings and received one of the letters in the mail – addressed to him and signed by himself! I like the creativity of this means of addressing the problem of inactive membership. Imagine how it would feel to receive an admonishing letter from yourself after neglecting church fellowship. While this is probably not the answer for our inactive church members, it does highlight the need for greater expectations in church membership. Baptist Press has an interesting article on the resolution “On Regenerate Church Membership and Church Member Restoration” passed at the 2008 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. Read it here. This is a hot topic that desperately needs addressing in many of our churches.

You can find an extensive list of resources on Church Discipline and Regenerate Church Membership Here

Thabiti Anyabwile has written an excellent book explaining healthy church membership. Read Jay Collier’s book review at Heritage Booktalk. Purchase the book below.

Technorati Tags: Regenerate Church Membership, Church Discipline, Inactive Members

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