In this final message, we'll hear one more biblical argument for the practice of church membership. And what does a person do if they want to become a member of the church after hearing all the arguments laid out in this series? We'll explain that process briefly in this message too.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
You. All right, we are wrapping up our series about church membership tonight. We've covered a lot of ground getting up to this point. We've seen that God has always made a distinction between those who are a part of his special people and those who aren't. And that distinction is meant to be seen today.
When a local church practices church membership, we've seen that there's a pattern of God's people practicing formal membership all throughout the Bible. Israel practiced it under the Old Covenant, and the church practices it under the New. Last week, we saw that Jesus prescribes the practice of church membership at the local church level, and he did this when he delivered his great commission to his first disciples. And that brings us to tonight. This final message in our series is going to have two parts to it.
In the first part, I'm going to give you one more biblical argument for the practice of church membership at the local level. And in the second part, we're going to look at some of the practical ways we walk out church membership here in Gospel City. If this is your first time ever joining us for one of our Sunday night services, and you haven't had a chance to watch any of this message series online and you have no idea what church membership is, don't worry. I got you. Right now, I'm going to give you the definition that we've been using throughout this series.
I put it on your outline. Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian's gospel profession, the church's promise to give oversight to the Christian, and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight. When a local church practices church membership, it draws an invisible line around a group of people. And it says, as a church, we can affirm the professions of faith of those who are inside this line, and we give ourselves to helping these specific people grow in their faith in Jesus in real and tangible ways. We will teach these ones to obey Christ because they have indicated to us that they want us to do that.
We can't speak of those who are outside of the line, but we can speak of those who are a part of this church. And as far as we can tell, these ones are genuine followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what church membership says. I've been making arguments in this series in an attempt to show everyone that when a church practices church membership, they are doing something that is in line with what the Scriptures teach us about who the church is and what she's supposed to be doing. So, here's the last argument I'm going to make in this series for the biblical nature of church membership.
There are some commands in the Bible that cannot be obeyed apart from the practice of local church membership. In other words, church membership being in place is a prerequisite to obeying certain commands we have in the Bible. A prerequisite is something that is required as a prior condition for something else to happen or exist. Meaning that if you don't have the prerequisite in place first, you cannot do certain actions second. For example, the normal prerequisite to eating food as an adult is that you have to have a job where you make an income first.
Then when you get paid from that job, you can go and buy food second. That's an example of a regular prerequisite. Now, a Biblical prerequisite is something that's required as a prior condition for a Christian to be able to obey Jesus. I'm going to show you that church membership fits this definition because it needs to be in place first in order for Christians to obey some of Jesus' commands. Second, not all of Jesus' commands require church membership to be in place before they can be obeyed, but some of them do.
And even if it's only some commands in the Bible that require church membership to be in place, then that should be enough for a follower of Christ to want to become a member of a local church, if they aren't one already. This is important for all of us to understand. If there is anything missing in a Christian's life that makes it impossible for them to obey Jesus in a real and tangible way, then the Christian needs to make whatever changes they have to so that they can begin obeying God in those areas. If the way your life is structured makes obeying some of Jesus' commands impossible for you, then you need to restructure your life so that you can obey Jesus. Remember what we said last week - that Christians are one-trick ponies.
All we want to do is obey Jesus in our life. That's it. That's why we exist. And that's what the title of this message is. Getting at church membership is a Biblical prerequisite to obeying Christ.
Now, let me go ahead and show you why this is true. I'm going to give you three examples where church membership needs to be in place so that obedience to Jesus can be possible. Here's the first one, and it's going to be the first fill-in on your outline. Church membership needs to be in place so that elders can pastor the church. Biblically church membership needs to be in place so that elders can pastor the church.
Biblically this point will make zero sense to you if you think that the main reason pastors exist is to run a public worship service once a week, usually on Sundays. Some people think that. Some people are genuinely curious about what a pastor does all week long and all the spare time that we have between the weekly church services that they run from Sunday to Sunday. Now, if that was all we did facilitate a church service once a week, then the discussion we've been having about church membership these last few weeks has been a complete waste of time. Because I hope it's obvious to everyone that you don't need to be a member of the church to come to a public worship service like this.
Now, our Sunday night service is a big deal in the life of Gospel City Church. It's one of the cornerstones of what we do as a church here. I don't want you to think that I'm suggesting for a second that it isn't, but I need everyone to see what the Word of God actually calls Elders to do; expects them to do when it comes to pastoring Jesus's church. In one Peter, chapter five, one of the official spokesmen of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter calls elders to shepherd God's flock that is among them. Shepherd them, not entertain them, not tell them what they want to hear, not create a two-hour window once a week where they can participate in a religious experience.
Shepherd them. Now, shepherding people is a lot like shepherding sheep. That's why God uses that specific imagery in the Bible to describe it. Shepherding, God's people includes, but is not limited to feeding them the word of God, leading them to the pasture where they can experience the fullness of Christ in their life, protecting them against the wolves of false teachers and the schemes of the devil, caring for them their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs, loving them like the good shepherd loves us. This shepherding of people is full-time, round-the-clock work that is often uncelebrated and underappreciated.
It is deeply purposeful work. It's rewarding work. There's no higher calling. But easy is never a word a person should use when talking about the work of shepherding the flock of God's people. Just this week I came across a letter that John Piper's dad wrote to him when John was considering if he would enter pastoral ministry full time.
Here's what Bill Piper wrote to his son many years ago. Now, I want you to remember a few things about the pastorate. Being a pastor today involves more than merely teaching and preaching. You'll be the comforter of the fatherless and the widow. You'll counsel constantly with those whose homes and hearts are broken.
You'll have to handle divorce problems and a thousand marital situations. You'll have to exhort and advise young people involved in sordid and illicit sex with drugs and violence. You'll have to visit the hospitals, the shut-ins, the elderly. A mountain of problems will be laid on your shoulders and at your doorstep. And then there's the heartache of ministering to a weak and carnal and worldly apathetic group of professing Christians, very few of whom will be found trustworthy and dependable.
Then there are a hundred administrative responsibilities as a pastor. You're the generator and sometimes the janitor. The church will look to you for guidance in building programs church growth, youth activities, outreach, extra services, et cetera. You'll be called upon to arbitrate all kinds of problems. At times, you will feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Many pastors have broken under the strain. If the Lord has called you, these things will not deter nor dismay you. But I wanted you to know the whole picture, as in all of our Lord's work, there will be a thousand compensations. You'll see that people trust Christ as savior and Lord. You'll see these grow in the knowledge of Christ and His Word.
You'll witness saints enabled by your preaching to face all manner of tests. You'll see God at work in human lives, and there is no joy comparable to this. Just ask yourself, son, if you are prepared not only to preach and teach, but to also weep over men's souls, to care for the sick and dying, and to bear the burdens carried today by the saints of God. End quote. It's heavy and glorious stuff.
If you know what goes into pastoring people, you know how hard it is. But there's more. There's the highest level of accountability attached to this task. The author of the Book of Hebrew writes to his audience in Hebrew, chapter 13, verse 17, saying that they - your elders - keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.
Give an account to who? To God. Take a second to let that thought settle in your mind. The Bible says that elders are going to have to give an account to God for how they pastored the people that he put under their care. What kind of care and concern does God expect elders to have for his people?
To answer that question, it'll be helpful to know what kind of care and concern God has for his people. The apostle Paul, speaking to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, verse 28, says to them be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. Every member who belongs to God's church. His one. Only because God paid our entrance fee to get in.
If God paid for people to get into his church with the price of his own life, how much do you think he cares about the people in his church? If Jesus was tortured and killed on a cross so that he could bring us into his church, how much more is He going to love us now that we're in it? We cannot come close to fully comprehending how much God loves his people and cares for them. And elders must recognize the weight of that. And that means we must give ourselves to loving the sheep in our flock, like Jesus, the chief shepherd, loves them.
The Apostle John quotes Jesus saying these words about the relationship that Jesus had with his sheep. John, chapter ten. Starting in verse eleven, Jesus says, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, the hired hand, since he's not the shepherd and doesn't own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them.
This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn't care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. With Jesus serving as the model shepherd, elders are to lay down their lives for the sheep.
That's the way of Jesus. So, if we put all of this together when it comes to pastoring Jesus' Church, elders need to give themselves to identifying who the sheep are that we are accountable to God to pastor. And we need to spend time and energy and effort knowing them, praying for them, reaching out to them, responding to them, discipling them, teaching them, calling them, exhorting them, rebuking them, protecting them, laying down our lives for them, loving them. Here are a few of the ways that Jeff and I try to give ourselves to accomplishing this kind of pastoral care here in Gospel City, we schedule times throughout the year to meet with our members. And right now, that amounts to meeting with each member about once every couple of months, we call them on the phone or we meet up for coffee. We do this to check in to see how they're doing, to know them, to counsel them, to rejoice with them over the things that they're rejoicing over, and to pray with them. We also plan regular meetings throughout the year where we get all the members together and we worship Jesus. We take communion, we share with them, as elders, issues that are going on in the life of the church that they need to be aware of. We share any other updates, we pray, we eat, we laugh.
These happen about once a quarter right now. And these are some of the sweetest times in my life. We give the members of Gospel City priority access to us. I don't screen my calls and messages the same way for everyone. Next to my wife and daughter, church members get top priority in my life.
I'll still answer other calls because that's always the polite thing to do. But when my schedule is overwhelmed, as it often is, certain things have to be put aside till later and other things get the priority. Members in Gospel City are the elders' priority. We make deeper discipleship opportunities available to our members. Home Group, as amazing as it is, is open to absolutely everyone, member or not, Christian or not.
But our pipeline discipleship course is for members who want to be discipled by the elders of the church. Pipeline, which is optional and never mandatory, is a three-year curriculum designed to train disciples and how they are to go make disciples. Right now, I'm in the middle of taking a group of us through level three of this program for the very first time. It's really exciting.
I view Pipeline the same way I view Jesus modeling discipleship for us. When he trained up his disciples, he had twelve of them, and he discipled all of them perfectly, but there were three that he spent more time with on a regular basis. You could read about them in the Gospels. Peter, James, and John. The elders of Gospel City give themselves to discipling all of the members of the church.
But Pipeline affords us the opportunity to spend individual time with a smaller group of our members who want to be personally discipled even more. So, what does church membership have to do with all of this? Why does church membership need to be in place first as a prerequisite for the elders to pastor the church like this? Well, because of what it takes for elders to actually do these things. We pour our lives out to do these things, and we cannot do this special kind of posting for everyone who simply attends a Gospel City service.
It would be literally impossible to do. I'm not exaggerating. There are not enough hours in the week to pastor everyone who simply attends here on a Sunday night. And impossibility aside, we can't do these things for people who don't want it or expect it. What I'm about to say next might be news to some of you, but not everyone who comes to a Sunday service wants to be shepherded the way that the Bible calls them to be.
No matter how big or small the Sunday church gathering might be, everyone who attends will fall into one of six categories. And if you like using pictures, you can imagine this diagrammed on a pie chart in your mind in a Sunday worship service like the one we're all in right now, there can be one - Christians who are members of the church. Two - Christians who are members of another local church and they're just visiting. Three - Christians who are not members of any church. Four - unbelievers who are genuinely seeking Jesus and are here because they want to learn more about him. Five - unbelievers who are not genuinely seeking the Lord but are here for maybe other okay reasons. And then six - unbelievers who are not genuinely seeking the Lord and are here for bad reasons. Can you imagine Jeff and I giving ourselves to pastoring someone who attends on a Sunday and they're like... and the person that we're trying to pastor... and they're like, what are you doing? Why are you calling me all the time? Why are you trying to invite me out to lunch and talk about my life?
Why are you asking me those questions? I don't want or need this kind of stuff from you. All I want to do is show up on the Sundays that I feel like it maybe sing a song or two if I happen to like the song. Never serve, never give, and take things from the message that I like and leave the stuff that I don't. The only email I ever want from you is the one letting me know when the next potluck is happening.
Do you think Jeff and I would be honoring people's boundaries? Well, if we tried to impose our pastoral care upon people, if they don't want to be pastored by us, if they've never indicated to us that they want that kind of relationship from us? More importantly, do you think God will hold Jeff and me accountable for not pastoring a person who doesn't want to be pastored? One Peter five says shepherd the flock of God among you. And that implies that there is a way to identify who is a part of the flock that is among us and who isn't.
And when we can identify those who are in the flock, those who want to receive pastoral care from us, we can then move on to do the hard work of actually shepherding them. But not before that. As we've seen so far in this series, the practice of church membership draws a line of distinction around a certain group of people that formally makes up the local church, aka the Flock of God among us. And the people inside the line have raised their hands, so to speak, indicating to the elders of the church and to everyone else that they want to be pastored in the kind of way that you've heard described in this message. They welcome it, they want it, and they expect it as they should.
And that is exactly who Jeff and I and any future elders of Gospel City Church will pastor. We will pastor them like we're going to have to give an account to God for them, but we got to know who the sheep are before we shepherd them. That is what the biblical prerequisite of church membership allows us to do identify the sheep. Number two, church membership needs to be in place so that Christians can relate to their elders biblically. This is just the other side of the same coin.
Elders can't shepherd the flock among them biblically unless they know who is part of their flock. And the flock can't relate to their elders in a biblical way unless they have elders over them in the Lord. Take a look at Hebrew 1317 one more time. The author writes to his audience obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. The command is simple and straightforward, obey your leaders and submit to them.
But how is it possible to obey your leaders and submit to them if you don't have any leaders to obey or submit to? How are you going to obey the command in Hebrews 13 if you are not formally recognized and identified as a member of a local church that has elders over you? In the Lord, there is no shortage of leaders. Biblically qualified elders exist all over the world. You can find elders in local churches in almost every country.
How are you going to decide which ones you're going to submit to and obey as your elders? Forget that there are elders all over the world. There are a bunch of different pastors who shepherd local churches right here in the city of Port Coquitlam. How are you going to decide which ones you're going to submit to and obey as your elders from among all of them? Well, what if someone says that they don't need to become a member of a local church because they are a member of the universal body of Christ?
And because of that, they can loosely attend multiple different local churches without ever formally joining any of them? And that means, in their eyes, they can have pastors from various local churches. I'll answer that using a hypothetical scenario. Imagine you attend two different churches, each with their own team of elders that pastor the church. The elders at church number one announce that they are calling the church to pursue a particular biblical initiative, that they feel the Lord is calling their church to.
The elders at church number two also make an announcement that they too are feeling compelled by the loved to lead their church to pursue an equally good but different biblical initiative. Each church's vision requires the members to get on board, and that will require their time and their energy and their resources, and their effort. And it quickly becomes clear that it would be impossible to give yourself to both initiatives at the same time and in the same way. Now, what would you do in this scenario? Do you give yourself halfway to each one because you can't be in two places at the same time?
Do you say yes to one church and no to another? How would either of these kinds of responses reflect the command in Hebrews 13 to obey your leaders and submit to them if you need to disobey one set of elders from one church so that you can partially obey the others or vice versa? In this scenario, you cannot obey either team of elders fully. So that means you are disobeying both of them and therefore you are not obeying the command in Scripture found in Hebrews 1317. Now, what's the only way that you can avoid this hypothetical scenario from even having the possibility of happening?
Well, the answer is you're a member of one particular local church where you can give yourself to following the lead of the elders there, so long as they are leading you to accomplish the Lord's will in the life of the church. I would argue that the only way you can make sure you have a chance to obey Hebrews chapter 13, verse 17 in your life in any kind of regular and meaningful way is to be a member of a local church where you are counted among the flock. This way the elders know that they have the responsibility to shepherd you and that you know you have the responsibility to give yourself to being led by them. And you do that by obeying and submitting to them as they call you to obey Christ. Local church membership is the only way to ensure everyone is on the same page concerning this special sheep-shepherd relationship.
This brings us to number three, and this is going to be the next fill-in on your outline. Church membership needs to be in place so that Christians can submit to one another. Biblically, it needs to be in place so that Christians can submit to each other. Biblically formal church membership not only defines the relationship that Christians have with their elders and the elders with them, but it also defines the relationship they are meant to experience with their fellow members. The New Testament is filled with commands that we call the one another commands.
They're called that because the command has us fulfill a particular task toward other Christians. Not all the one another commands in the Bible require a person to be a member of a local church before they can obey them. There are many that could be done in the absence of church membership being in place, but I would argue that some of the one another commands can't be obeyed in any kind of meaningful way apart from both parties belonging formally to the same church. I'll show you what I mean by taking a look at the one another commands found in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Those first four don't necessarily require church membership, and I've put them down on your outline.
Ephesians, chapter four, verse two. Paul says with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 425 says, therefore putting away loving, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor because we are members of one another. Ephesians 4:32 says and be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. And Ephesians 5:19 says, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord.
Now, you don't need to be a member of a church to do these commands. You can love other Christians humbly, gently, and patiently, regardless of what church you or they belong to. You can speak truthfully to them. You can be kind and compassionate to them and forgive them. You can even speak to them in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
If the opportunity to do that ever presents itself, you can obey the commands found in these four verses in Ephesians without the prerequisite of church membership in place. Let me read this next one for you. It's also on your outline. Ephesians, chapter five, verse 21 says, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. You could technically do this command even if both of you, you and the other believer are not members of the same church.
You could submit to another Christian you don't know. But are you ever going to honestly think about this command with me? And let's put aside for the moment that the Apostle Paul is writing to a specific church in the city of Ephesus. Although the truths found in this letter to the Ephesians can and should be applied to believers everywhere, he's not writing to the global church. He is writing to members of those churches in Ephesus, and he's giving them specific one another commands to do towards -get this - literally one another in their church.
When they received this letter from the Apostle Paul, they were likely all together with one another when it was read, and they would have had a good idea how this letter was to be applied among them. They do the things in the letter to one another. But let's forget about that for a second. Let's come back to this one verse. Elders aren't the only ones who can call another believer to obey one of the commands that Christ has given us in His Word.
Other saints can call you to obey what Christ plainly commands, but are you going to submit to another person calling you to obey Christ if that person isn't a Christian? Are you going to submit to someone who hasn't submitted themselves first to Jesus and then to his church? Are you required to submit to them if you don't know their life, their character, their love for Jesus, or even if they are saved, how are you going to be able to take anything they call you to do in the name of Jesus seriously? If we're being honest, you're not going to submit to anything that they call you to do. And I wouldn't blame you because I probably wouldn't submit to that kind of person either if I knew nothing of a person other than that they claim to be a follower of Jesus, but they haven't submitted to the will of Jesus by becoming a member of his church where their submission to him can actually be fleshed out.
I'd have a hard time taking what they say about the Bible seriously. But on the other hand, if I know the one who is speaking God's Word into my life and I see their life, I know that they've been incorporated into the same body of Christ as I've been. They are submitting to the same Jesus that I am. They are submitting to the same elders I am. They are submitting to the same church I am.
Then I will be much more comfortable listening to them share the Word of God with me and even call me to obey the Word of God in my life. There's nothing more beautiful to me than a community of God's people who know, love, and minister to each other like that. And that's what we should be growing up into as a church. So, you can technically submit to another professing Christian if they exercise the authority of the Word of God in your life.
You can technically do that. But are you likely to? If you know nothing about their faithfulness in submitting to a local church themselves? You probably won't. And that would be a problem because the Word of God commands us to submit to one another.
Church membership remedies this because it makes a way for us to obey commands like the one found in Ephesians chapter five, verse 21. It creates opportunities for us to live in a local community of God's people, where we can submit to one another with a clear conscience. And so, to recap, we've just looked at three examples where church membership needs to be in place so that obedience to Jesus can be possible. Church membership needs to be practiced so that the elders can identify who they're called to pastor. It needs to be in place so that Christians can identify who their elders are so that they can obey them and submit to their teaching in real and tangible ways.
And it needs to be in place so that we can obey commands in the Bible like the one found in Ephesians 5:21. We need to know who the other members in the church are before we can fully give ourselves to doing the one another commands with them and towards them. Add these to all the other things that we've observed about church membership in this series that God has always made a distinction between his people and not his people, and that distinction is seen today when a local church practices church membership. Formal membership has always been practiced by God's people. We can see the pattern of it play out in how Israel practiced membership in the Old Testament and how church practices formal membership in those new, Jesus prescribed the practice of church membership when he told us the Great Commission.
He gave us the Great Commission to do when we looked at that last week, how that is a call to practice church membership at the local church level. And again, church membership is a prerequisite to obeying some commands in the Bible. I hope all these arguments have landed for you. I hope they've led you to appreciate what church membership is more than you did before the series started. If you agree with the arguments that you've heard in this series and you're not a member of a local church yet, the next logical step is to become one.
And I'll show you how you can do that here in Gospel City if that's where the Lord is calling you, to be. We'll look at that in just a minute. But what if you're here and you're still on the fence about it? What if you're still posting against the concept of church membership even after hearing a four-part series arguing for it? If that's you, here's what I invite you to do wrestle with the arguments that I've made in this series.
Engage with them, think through them, and develop a counterargument to them. If you don't agree, write it down and show me. Show me from the Bible how the practice of church membership isn't biblical. This will take you intellectual time and energy to complete, but it will be profitable for you to engage with the Bible like this on your own. Don't just say, Nah, I've heard what he said about it, but I still don't like the idea of church membership.
I still don't think it's biblical. And someone says to you, oh, that's interesting. Why don't you think it's biblical? Don't respond with, I don't really have an argument against it. I just don't like the way it sounds.
I don't like the way it makes me feel. Now, you're free to respond that way if you want to. You're free to respond however you like. I would call you to more, that's all. And I would be happy to have conversations with you about the wrestles that you're having with it.
Now, for those of you who want to lean into church membership, now that you've heard the arguments for it and you feel compelled to become a member here at Gospel City, let me walk you through how we go about affirming new members in the church. 'First thing you need to do, if that's you, let Jeff or me know that you are interested in becoming a member of the church, you can come up to either of us after the service and just tell us. You can email, text, or call us during the week. Or you can check off the circle on your connect card that says, I want to become a member of Gospel City Church, and one of us will connect with you sometime during this week. This first step is just that.
It's a first step. You're not making any final decision at this point. You're simply letting us know that you're interested in learning some more and pursuing the potential of becoming a member. And this lets us begin a conversation with you. Second, join our online membership path.
We've created content online formatted in a step-by-step process that takes you through everything you need to know about becoming a member of Gospel City Church. There's no deadline to have this online content completed, so you can go at your own pace. If you're not very familiar with using the Internet, please let us know and we can convert the online content into a hard copy for you. We'd be happy to do that. Now, this online path exists to help you understand and answer some of the following questions:
What is the church? What is the gospel? What is a Christian? What is Baptism? What do the elders of Gospel City commit to do for the members of the church? What do the members of the church commit to do for one another? What do we believe as a church? What is our statement of faith? What are our distinctives as a church? What do we believe in Gospel City? That may not be what every other local church believes.
We have people go through this online content because it addresses some of the things that we need to know about a person who wants to join our church. These questions will help us discern if someone has already become a follower of Christ or if they are still on a journey towards becoming one. They'll let us know if a person has been baptized, which is something a person needs to go through if they're going to be a member of Jesus' Church. Remember, Jesus calls believers to get baptized. If a person is already baptized, great.
If they haven't been yet, we can walk that process out with them. The online content also helps us describe to the potential new member how we're going to provide oversight to their discipleship if they end up wanting that. We don't want anyone to be surprised about what they're signing up to be a part of when they become a member of the church. We don't want anybody coming to the realization six weeks after they've become a member of the church and they say, Whoa, wait a second. You guys mean to tell me that you tried to obey Jesus in literally everything?
If I had known that I don't think I would have become a member here. See, we want those who are becoming members to join the church with eyes wide open, knowing ahead of time what they can expect once they've become members. We don't want anyone to have any surprises later on. You may get to this point in the process of going through the online content and you realize you might not want to experience the kind of life that you're reading about. Your initial zeal for becoming a member of the church may have subsided after going through the stuff online, but maybe you finish this online portion, and you realize that there's nothing more you'd rather have than to be a part of a people who live for Jesus together the way that you've just read about.
And if that's you, then you move on to the third step, which is to meet with the elders and we'll walk with you through the answers that you've submitted online. We'll take you at your word when you share your answers to the questions that we ask and barring any obvious reason that would keep us from moving forward, we will affirm you as a new member of Gospel City Church. And that's it. That's it. There's an unofficial step.
And because this is an ongoing step, for as long as you are a part of Gospel City church, you will get to enjoy all the blessings and benefits that God has for you that are found in formally belonging to his church.
With that said, I'm going to call Jeff and Maureen to come up. I'm going to get ready to lead us in worship and I'm going to close this message and this whole series with our definition for church membership one last time. Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian's gospel profession. The church's promise to give oversight to the Christian and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight. May the Lord Jesus Christ give us the grace that we need to be the kind of church that he died for us to experience.
Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Jesus, I just thank you. I thank you every week.
I thank you every day that you are the Lord of your church. You promise to build your church. You tell us what your church is. It is people sinners saved radically by our grace that you made available when you went to the cross, died on the cross, went into the ground, and rose three days later. The gospel message, the good news of what you did to purchase a people to yourself is the only reason that your church exists.
I thank you for the church that exists in his room. Believers, brothers and sisters who have received your grace and applied it to their life and have been brought into your people filled with your spirit. And now we live for you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that we don't have to guess about the purpose of our church and what we're supposed to do as your distinct people.
You give us your word? And I pray, Lord, that you'd increase our zeal to know Your word and even increase our zeal even more to not just know it, but to do it in every area of our life, and not just individually. As Christians, Lord, we want to be a collective, a church, a people that is sold out to know you, to love you, and to do Your will in our lives and in this city. Teach us that and empower us to do that. Jesus, build your church around the world.
Build it in India like we prayed earlier. Build it here. Port Coquitlam. We pray and use Gospel City to that end. I ask all those things, Jesus, in your sweet and your powerful name.
Amen. Amen. Church.