Life Together

June 9, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs

Is church membership biblical? Is it necessary? Last week we saw that God created the church, that the church is the family of God, his household, his people. Embracing this identity means that we embrace a new leader (King Jesus), a new lifestyle (the kingdom lifestyle), and a new mission (the mission of the king to renew all his good creation). As the church, together as his people, we follow Christ in all of life for the glory of God and the renewal of our neighborhoods. Here is the rub. All that identity and mission of the church stuff can sound great when it is general. However, that identity and mission is not meant to stay in the abstract, in the realm of ideas. It is meant to touch down into real life, with real people; real people that you commit to, submit to and love in all their (and your) messiness. Membership in the local church, where we rub shoulders with real people, is where this happens. The local church is where the people of God take shape and form. In preparation for Sunday, please read and pray through 1Corinthians 12:12-27. I can’t wait to worship together this Sunday. Pastor David “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5).