What Does Church Membership Mean?

I’ve been in churches all my life, working in churches for thirty years and working full-time as an ordained minister for twenty years. I began noticing a decade ago church membership as a formal idea began to change. We would have trouble getting enough members to show up for business meetings in order to have a quorum--the minimum required by church bylaws to approve things like budgets, salaries and outreach to the community. New people would come to church and even become active participants but see no point in joining and becoming members. Some would even say they preferred not to be official members, because they wouldn’t be asked to serve on committees or boards. Those who would join often didn’t stay long. The first time conflict occurred or something happened not to their liking they left without saying goodbye. Membership did not seem to matter like it once did.
 
This week Gallup Polling released their latest results on religious life in America. The headline of their results declares for the first time since polling began in 1937 less than 50% of Americans are members of churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious organizations. The statistic is down 20% since the year 2000. Prior to that, church membership rates held steady at around 70% for over six decades. This is a huge decline! The reasons given for this dramatic change are basically three-fold: 1. Continuing rise of people with no religious affiliation 2. Generational change--Generation X is at 50% church membership and Millennials are at 35% 3. Rise in religious people who are not church members.
 
For churches like ours--ones with a congregational polity or ones where important business is carried out by a vote of church members, not having members (at least not committed ones) poses some real problems. Who makes decisions about the church? More importantly, it raises the question of what does it even mean to be a church if membership no longer matters? As far as I can tell, nobody has a good answer to these questions. After a year or more of church members staying home and streaming worship on TV’s and computers, will membership matter even less?
 
Here are a few thoughts I have on the matter:
 

1. The problem isn’t new. Today is Maundy Thursday where Christians commemorate Jesus’ last night where he was betrayed by one disciple and abandoned by the rest. The membership roll of disciples didn’t count for much when the going got tough. Also, for most of Christian history, church membership has had less to do with actual discipleship and more to do with cultural and ethnic identity. History shows that being a church member is no guarantee as to whether one is a faithful follower of Jesus.
2. Every church I know of has a membership roll that really has nothing to do with the actual functioning of the church. Even lists of so-called “active members” usually are much larger than the faithful few who actually keep a church going. 
3. With few exceptions, churches determine their “success” by the number of members they have, but history shows this was always a spurious proposition. Even megachurches that claim large membership numbers fail to publicly share how many of those “members” are truly active. much less how many of them lost interest and moved on.
4. Is it foolish to think that declining memberships might turn out to be a good thing? Yes, this means the end of doing church they way it has been done for the last 200 years or so and that is painful, but if being a part of a Christian community is no longer about your standing in the community, cultural identity or networking for business gain, maybe it could be only what it was meant to be in the first place--following Jesus in a manner that one’s life is truly transformed by an experience of God. 

In the near term, church membership will still matter for the 50% of believers who still claim one. The cultural changes sweeping churches today and in the years to come offer an opportunity for those of us who still say we are members of a church. We can rethink what membership means and we can recommit to following Jesus rather than thinking of church like a club, a rotary group or a bowling league. 
 
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples