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Community Survey Prayer Spring Branch Church Plant PNC Information
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Membership into the church should be a priority in establishing the church. The Pastor should be in charge of the organization of the New Member goals and should be the primary leader in meeting and instructing the new member activities. The Launch Team members should also be encouraged to be involved. The membership will be the growing life of the new church and that membership will be shaped by the choices the Pastor and Launch Team make. Following are some issues to consider: 1. Membership vs. Nonmembership: A decision needs to be made of how to view membership and non-membership. The question to be asked is why would joining your church be any different or better than just attending as a visitor? What is significant about "crossing the line" from being a visitor or nonmember to being a member? Before defining membership, it should be presented that church involvement at all levels can happen as a nonmember as well as a member. Erwin McManus, Pastor of Mosaic, writes in An Unstoppable Force, “ We decided that everything that we could do for a person we would do regardless of membership. If you want to learn the Scriptures at Mosaic, you don’t need to be a member. If you want to receive counseling, you don’t need to be a member. If your desire is to be loved, accepted, cared for, or encouraged, you certainly do not need to be a member. Everything we can do, it is our intention to do for everyone, regardless of membership.” So why become a member? McManus further explains: "...membership is an invitation to genuine intimacy. When people become members, they are saying that they submit their lives to the spiritual authority of this community and welcome genuine accountability in their spiritual journeys.” In the above example, nonmembers can choose whether they want to participate whereas the expectations of members is that they do participate. These expectations are clearly stated and can even be presented in a form of a pledge for the new member. Examples of these expectations will be presented in this section and in the following section, New Members Program When We Are Established. On the opposite thinking, there are congregations that let everyone become a member irregardless of commitment or belief. Their thinking is that people need to have a sense of belonging and they reach out to a broken community claiming that we love you and want you to belong with us. Grace and belonging become the predominant benefits of membership. There can still be expectations of the member but there can also be varying degrees of how those expectations are expressed and expected. As a related issue, the Pastor and Launch Team will need to establish what a nonmember can and cannot do within the church community. Please refer to New Members Issues. 2. Curriculum Goals: The New Member curriculum will probably consist of at least 3 goals:
A Word Before Continuing: I would like to restress the importance of the previous two points, Membership vs. Nonmembership and the Curriculum goals. The decisions here are critical to the design of the new church and should be reached with the understanding that they will be permanent. To change these values would be to change the significant core of the church. The Pastor and Launch Team need to be in agreement of what being a member of the church would mean and what is valued should be known by the membership. In fact, each member should be able to state what it means to be a member of the church. Furthermore, the member should be able to state what is expected of them as a member of the church. If the decision is made to have a pledged commitment, ie. being a part of a small group, then that member commitment should not change unless the church as a whole is being reconstructed. For further insight: Surprising Insights From The Unchurched With the permanency of the previous understood, we will move into areas that are changeable but still require decisions. As the membership grows and as the church body begins to take shape, the Pastor and Launch Team should be re-evaluating the New Member program and making changes that seem to be more adaptive to the situation. 3. The New Member Program Structure: The actual program structure can be accomplished in many different ways. Some of the immediate questions would be:
4. When to begin the New Member Program: To answer the question of when to begin New Member classes, a prerequisite question of kinds of membership need to be answered. This toolbox is being created in a Presbyterian context although hopefully will not be limited to Presbyterian Church plants. The rules of membership may need to be explored in regards to the governing denomination. The following material will be based on the Presbyterian Book of Order.
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