Membership in Symphonic

Beginnings

What do we mean when we say we are members of the church Symphonic? How does someone become a member of the church Symphonic? What difference does being a member of the church Symphonic make? To me? To others?

 The term "church" as it is used in the bible has several different levels. A church can be a group meeting together in a home or a city; it can be a reference to all believers who live in a particular region; it can be a manner of discussing all people who have ever become part of God's family from the beginning of time. When we speak of the church Symphonic, we mean the local gathering of Christians who meet together under that name. A local church is characterized by recognized/defined members who are mutually submissive and accountable to each other and to recognized/defined leaders, all of whom are under submission to the leader and founder of the entire church, Jesus Christ.

 No person ever started a church or became a member of a church or led a church without Jesus Christ first starting it, adding people to it, and leading it. He is the measure of all things, the maker of all things, the sustainer of all things, and the head of all things. Symphonic exists only through Him and to accomplish His purposes in the earth. Without Him Symphonic ceases to have either a means or a meaning for existing. Each person who becomes a member of Symphonic can only do so at His calling and in obedience to Him, and will only remain a member of Symphonic for as long as He has a purpose in their continued participation in the church.

 The Real Church

In a real church Jesus chooses the members and informs them of His choice. Jesus also defines the roles and responsibilities of those He chooses. All of this is a work of the heart that is discerned in our spirit. Like love, it involves a leap of faith. Joining a church is risky, and we should approach the decision with prayerfulness and thoughtfulness, leaning hard upon Jesus and trusting Him first and foremost. We need to be able to say, "I joined this church because I believe Jesus asked me to join myself to it." Leaders or people who take on particular roles and responsibilities within the church also need to be able to say, "I serve in this capacity because I believe Jesus has asked me and equipped me to serve." While those who are already members and leaders of a church play a part in helping others to find their way into membership and areas of service, no other answer will ever substitute for the clear and simple statement of faith in Jesus's call to an individual.

 A church is an organism standing in the gap between the seen and the unseen; this world and the next. Because the church is a living organism it would be wrong to refer to a place or a building as a church. This concept has caused confusion in American society and brought about a belief that church is something that one can go to, rather than understanding it is something that one becomes a part of. When we speak of "becoming a member" of a church, we are speaking along lines similar to the mysterious organic bonds that form between husband and wife, parent and child. We are not "in charge of" these forces, although we can recognize them and make choices about them. Becoming a church member is much more like falling in love than it is like joining the YMCA.

 Since a church is much more like an organism than an organization, it isn't surprising that its early stages should be characterized by less form and that, as it develops, it becomes more structured. Every organism begins as a single cell. Even after many cell divisions an organism may not appear to have much in the way of organization, but eventually cells take on more specialized functions to bring the organism the form it needs to live fully. The great mystery in living organisms is this: no one knows why cells divide; it just happens. Cellular growth happens after the nature of the organism and in the proper time for each organism. The church grows in this same mysterious way. Spiritual forces act upon us according to the purposes Jesus has for us. Our growth principle; the thing causing us to grow at all and to take on definite form for full life, is Jesus Christ.

Family Resemblance

The bible teaches us about milestones and characteristics which go along with people who have come to know they are part of God's church through the work of Jesus Christ. Just as siblings from the same mother and father can share a "family resemblance" even though they are unique individuals, members of God's family have common characteristics while retaining their own unique and personal relationship with God.

 Salvation by grace through faith in the work of Jesus Christ alone is the beginning of the spiritual life of Christians, and the primary "family resemblance" of all the members of God's family down through all the ages. It is the first mysterious work of God in us that we come to realize the truth of the Gospel and to believe it applies to us personally. This work may come as an explosive revelation or a gentle awakening, but it comes to us. None of us makes ourselves into a Christian. We recognize who we are when we recognize what Jesus did through his birth, life, death and resurrection. Our birth into the family of God (the universal church) comes through this vehicle of God's work, God's prompting us to look at his work, and God's enabling us to believe in his work.

 Once we recognize who Jesus is and who we are, we submit to the rite of baptism. Baptism is very much like a wedding ceremony: we fall in love, we sense a desire to join ourselves to a person, we invite our friends and loved ones to help us acknowledge and celebrate the mysterious bond we've discovered in our hearts. Just as a wedding doesn't create a marriage, but displays it, so our baptism displays the relationship we've found in our hearts with God through Jesus Christ. And this is the way Jesus asked his followers to acknowledge the beginning of their relationship with Him.

 The rite of communion is the manner in which Jesus asked his followers to remind each other of their relationship with Him. Continuing with the analogy of a marriage, communion is similar to celebrating wedding anniversaries, or the renewal of vows. Together with our friends and loved ones we stop the normal flow of life and take time to remember how love arrived, how we continue to love and how we hope to love in the future. In the bread and the wine of communion we see the work of Jesus Christ for us again; his broken body and his shed blood, and again we see who he is and who we are.

Life in The Family

What does a church do? One of the primary analogies used in the bible to describe church is that of family. Families are as unique as individuals, and each family has its own set of values, chores, routines and rules. If you grew up in a family where mom and dad ran a painting business, it was unthinkable to grab any paintbrush and use it to paint your face with mud from a back yard mud puddle. In a different family, pulling that stunt got laughter and pictures taken; in the painter's family you were sent to your room.

The family business of the church is telling everyone about the gospel. This is why the church exists. We are a repository of the gospel of Jesus Christ; a community in which the Good News operates all the time. We are to relate to one another through the gospel, resolve our conflicts through the gospel, grow and build through the gospel, endure hardships through the gospel, raise our families through the gospel, work and learn and marry through the gospel. A church has the gospel as its lone resource for life. A church puts forward an alternative community; a city within a city. A church says to all people: This is what your life can be if you live in light of what God has done through the gospel of Jesus Christ. By doing this we live fully ourselves while helping others to picture themselves as part of God's family.

 Family Arguments

A good rule of thumb for relationships is this: no conflict means no growth, conflict without resolution means hell, and conflict with resolution means life and growth. Families don't always see eye to eye, and as we've already said, churches function much like families. Sometimes our simple affirmations of what we believe Jesus has called us to do conflict with what Jesus seems to have told others to do. Now what? There are three different outcomes in such a scenario: neither person is hearing Jesus correctly, one is hearing correctly and the other isn't, or both are hearing correctly. The first two need no explanation, the last is explained by something all Christians need to accept and live by - God sees possibilities that never enter our minds at all, and what we often see as mutually exclusive, "either - or" situations, turn out to be expanding possibilities of a "both - and" nature.

 When conflict arises the church must go to our one resource for resolution: the gospel. The gospel disarms all conflicts because it sets us at the foot of the cross where The Conflict was resolved through Jesus Christ on our behalf. All other conflicts are not to be compared to this. The gospel swallows them up. When those who disagree are brought to the cross and shown their true position again, often there is instantaneous reconciliation. Each person in the church carries the responsibility to live in light of the cross and to attempt conflict resolution by reminding themselves first of the gospel and then reminding those with whom they struggle. Sometimes we are so blinded by conflict that the cross becomes blurred or distant. Then we must seek the help of those who are seeing it more clearly than we are.

Church "leaders" are called elders. Elders are people who have walked through many situations and days with Jesus and others. We rely on them to see the cross clearly on a regular basis and to point us to Jesus. Church leaders are called to use their experience with God and their knowledge of scripture to point the church to Christ at all times, but especially when conflicts arise. The church should bring conflicts to elders and seek their help in resolving them, and elders should be alert to conflicts in the church just as a father or mother know the sound of unrest within their own homes.

One of the most unique aspects of the church from its earliest days was its social, political, racial, and gender diversity. The gospel allowed human beings to remain in close community who could not be together in any other context. The New Testament is full of warnings to these early gospel communities: stop lying to each other, don't steal from each other, be fair to each other, etc. So from the beginning churches have had plenty of conflict, but they've also shown the world a way to live in it without destroying themselves. We must not try to cover up our disagreements. Both inside the church and out, solving real conflicts through applying the truth of the gospel is one of the most powerful ways we show the real presence of Jesus. The church is encouraged when Jesus shows himself more wonderful than our brokenness and the people not yet in the church get to see the practical way the gospel works with real people.

A final word about conflicts. There are times when godly people cannot find a resolution. Each of us is responsible to Jesus Christ above all else. We must not lay aside our genuinely held beliefs about what He has told us to do just for the sake of "keeping the peace" or "going along to get along." The gospel enables us to both lay down our conflicts in peace and to pick them up and hold onto them with confidence. If laying down a conflict or holding onto one produces bitterness or pride, or other distance from Christ, we need to re-examine what we believe Jesus is showing us to do.

The Gospel In

Unlike organizations operating within the framework of the world where "membership has its privileges" and potential members ask the question "what is in this for me?," the church is an organism living within the framework of God's kingdom. Membership in a church has many benefits, but no privileges, because, as we've already seen, we do not join a church, Jesus adds us to a church. Jesus alone holds all privilege and power in a real church. For our part we recognize how he exercised his power and laid aside his privilege in order to add us to God's family. Once we recognize this work of God in us and for us, we ask the question, "what is in this for Christ?" And we begin to work in the family business of telling the gospel to everyone, starting with the church itself.

People who become part of a church give up their right to live as independent agents seeking their own good before others, and become interdependent upon each other through complete dependence upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. This binding of ourselves together through first being bound to Jesus Christ is the key to true community, and is at the root of the main benefit of church membership: gospel correction.

From our earliest days we've received many messages about who we are and what we are worth. As a result of these messages all of us have developed ways of coping with the world. A boy who grew up receiving messages telling him he was valuable because of good grades in school grows up to be a man who gathers graduate degrees like dandelions because he's "the smart one." A girl who received messages telling he she was valuable because of her looks becomes a woman who never puts on makeup because she rejects the identity of "the pretty one." No one escapes these messages and they create areas of untruth in us; places where we live according to a lie. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the way we overcome the false identities and values, however we are usually the last to see our coping mechanisms. We've developed these identities over many years. It is hard to see the lies we've embraced as truth.

Gospel correction is the way in which the members of a church consistently use the gospel to break up those lies and to accept the full truth of value and identity given to us in Christ. Having others observe your life for defects which are beyond your own powers of observation, lovingly communicating them to you, and walking with you until they are rectified is powerful and good, and is crucial in developing the alternative community through which others can see the gospel at work.

In this light a true community cannot ever be one in which members come and go with no consequence or who are not clearly committed to membership in the community. This would destroy the ability of the community to speak truth and love to each other. We must always take into account the fact that we are joined together with others through the gospel of Jesus.

The Gospel Out

Recognizing you are part of a church is not a way to set yourself apart from anything; it is the way to understand how you are to fit into everything. It is true there is a line between those who have not become followers of Christ and members of His church, but it isn't a line of hostility; it should be a line of hospitality. The meetings and business and life of the church should be as open as possible to those who don't know or believe the good news yet. Remember, the family business of the church is to tell the gospel to everyone. We tell it to each other. We tell it to others.

Like Jesus Christ, we do not engage the world from a distance but neither do we attempt to erase our distinct identity as ones who belong to God's family. Christians cannot deny either their humanity or their divine calling. We must always identify ourselves as BOTH members of the broken and desperately needy human race AND members of God's eternal and holy family.

The service of the church to those who are not yet part of God's family is the telling of the gospel. Although the church engages many temporal needs of people, no temporal need supercedes this service and no service of the church can ever be detached from gospel service. Our motives are gospel motives. Our means are gospel means. Our ends are gospel ends. We must use our resources in this world to do whatever Jesus asks us to do. He alone sees clearly what a person's need really is, and only in him are we safe to give to others. Human charity and compassion are often the enemies of true gospel service because those who engage in them are attempting to build themselves up or alleviate guilt rather than bring others to the true and full life Christ has for them. When we serve we must be able to express the same sentiments as when we joined the church: Jesus has called us to do this work and so we do it. Those who receive gospel service may bless us or curse us. Amen. We are not trying to build a good reputation or please the world through our good actions. We are attempting to build the kingdom of God through obedient service to its chief architect, Jesus.

Endings

The church is the community Jesus Christ came to create and to inhabit through his Holy Spirit. We love Jesus. We follow Jesus. We talk about Jesus. We remind each other about Jesus. We ask others if they know Jesus. We are corrected by Jesus. We love each other through Jesus. We have hope for all people through Jesus. The tiniest bands of people, joining themselves together in the name of Jesus, have been agents of radical change for good in our world. We who are called together in this time and place in the church Symphonic say through him and to him, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done."

Becoming a Member

For those who believe Christ is moving them to join the church Symphonic, we ask you to download and read our covenant of membership.  Each quarter the church spends one Sunday morning celebrating as a community.  We baptize those who desire to follow Christ's command; we remember Christ's work by sharing communion, and we have a meal together and play music and catch up on each others lives.  Basically we have a party.  On those days we ask people to turn in signed membership covenants as part of the celebration.  If you find yourself questioning any aspect of our document, "Membership in Symphonic," or our covenant, and you desire further explanation, we ask you to contact one of the elders personally or you can send an email to symphonicforthecity@gmail.com with a subject line of "membership questions."