Being a member of a church–a local body of believers–implies that you are a part of the church, as a body part is part of a body. We call it a part because it’s attached in meaningful way to the larger unit, the body. So then are “members” of a church really members if they are detached from the body?

I want to leave the analogy of the body for a moment and just explicate (read: vent) that there are those members of churches that are members because once upon a time they walked down the aisle and the church “voted” for them to become members, and have since disappeared; but they still hold membership. What is membership but that you belong to the larger unit? It’s impossible to belong if you don’t go, nor is spiritually healthy.

Mark Dever notes in his contributing chapter in A God Entrancing Vision of All Things points out that in 1996 “the average attendance on Sunday morning among Southern Baptist churches was…seventy… [and]…the average U.S. Southern Baptist church has 233 members” (p138). One-third of the members show up on Sunday!