[Reflections on The Discipline] Membership
In light of the upcoming Fifteenth General Conference of The Wesleyan Church, I have begun a review of The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church 2022, which serves as the seminal definition of Wesleyan belief and polity. My objective in this is to remind myself of the timeless things which have driven our denomination since its inception and to consider how to best pursue them in the next fifty years. Moreover, I intend to document this journey by sharing thoughts, experiences, and dreams along the way, and in so doing, I hope to encourage and even inspire those who will be elected in 2025 to be present at General Conference in 2026 to imagine what could and should be.
Part 2, Chapter 2 of The Discipline lays out the membership structure of The Wesleyan Church. For the first several years that I served as a Wesleyan pastor, this chapter was the bane of my existence. While I wholeheartedly embraced the basic premise of membership as a discipleship tool, the structure and design for membership were confusing and cumbersome. For instance, we described membership as a vehicle for discipleship, but the commitments we asked members sent the clear message that new believers need not apply.
Fortunately, over the last decade, the structure has been simplified, and much of the clunkiness has been removed. As a result, even relatively new believers can now be recognized as members. Generally speaking, this is a positive development. We should recognize recent converts, immature as they may be, as part of the church because that is what the Bible says they are. However, in my experience and observations, there remain three points of concern.
Membership as ruling elite
Recently, I was doing some statistical analysis of churches in our district when I discovered a surprising trend. Smaller portions of congregations are becoming members. In 2021, Wesleyan churches reported an average of 7% more members than their average attendance. In most churches, this would be explained by shut-ins, people working weekends, etc. By 2024, however, Wesleyan churches reported an average of 5% fewer members than their average attendance. During that same¡ time, the median ratio of members to attenders fell from 94.4% to 75.9%, and the percentage of churches reporting at least twice as many attenders as members increased from 19% to 27%.
When I first noticed this trend, my initial theory was that our churches were growing faster than they could make members. Certainly, this is plausible. Between 2021 and 2024, the denomination’s attendance rose from 127,677 to 195,480, an increase of 53%. During the same period, however, membership increased only 2%. The magnitude of this disparity suggests other factors are at work.
The first of these factors is widely documented: since COVID-19, people are less interested in becoming members of volunteer organizations. This creates an interesting tension in the church wherein people will come to services to consume the music and teachings, but they will not commit to serving or giving to support those things. Membership is seen as a part of that.
The second factor is a lack of emphasis on membership in many of our churches. Indeed, many parishioners assume they are members simply by virtue of attending the church. Others have no idea that membership is a thing. It is not surprising that, in such churches, a smaller portion of the attenders become members.
Whether intentional or not, the effect of this trend is that there are fewer people eligible to serve on church boards or as district conference delegates, fewer people able to vote on budgets or other matters, and fewer people to hold the pastor and leadership accountable. The result is the further consolidation of power with the pastor and higher levels of authority (e.g., district superintendent), moving our churches and denomination further from the presbyterian government that was a key distinction and safeguard from abuse. This creates a sort of ruling elite comprised of the clergy and their friends, and as much as I would like to trust these (I am, after all, a member of the Wesleyan clergy, after all!), I believe in the principles underlying our denomination: that clergy and laity must share responsibility for the ministry and direction of the church.
Membership as the beginning or end of the discipleship process
Paragraph 551:1 describes membership as “a ministry tool to use in the process of spiritual development, subsequent to conversion and leading to maturity in Chirst.” It is intended “to enhance the discipleship process of maturing people toward Christlikeness.” To be certain, this ideal is commendable, but in my experience, I have rarely seen membership work this way. Instead, I have seen one of two scenarios unfold.
In the first scenario, membership is seen as the beginning of the discipleship process, and a church’s spiritual formation efforts are focused exclusively on people who are already parishioners. Generally, this takes the form of a classroom setting inside the church building where people who have been saved and baptized are educated and formed spiritually. It is assumed that they have made some sort of commitment to the Lord and are intent on growing spiritually.
In the second scenario, membership is seen as the end or destination of the discipleship process. That is, membership is seen as the culmination of a person’s spiritual growth, and once achieved, there is no reason for further growth. In such churches, ministry typically focuses on outreach to people who are familiar with Christian principles but have not yet made a commitment to the Lord, and once they make the initial commitment, are baptized, and become members, there is little emphasis on continuing spiritual formation.
Let me be clear. Both of these churches are incomplete. In the first scenario, the church is neglecting the first half of the Great Commission (i.e., “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” in Matthew 28:19) and focusing on the second half of the Great Commission (i.e., “teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” in Matthew 28:20). In the other scenario, the church focusing on the first half and neglecting the first.
The problem, however, is even bigger because even those churches that are focused on baptizing new believers are too often ignoring people who are not yet ready for even that first step. A half century ago, James Engel and Viggo Søgaard developed what became known as the Engel Scale to model the process of conversion and identify the various decision points along the way. Since then, there have been various versions of the model, but probably the most recognizable form today begins with -10, where a person has absolutely no awareness of God, and proceeds to a +5, where a person is thoroughly discipled and stewarding life, finances, and the gospel on behalf of the Lord. Almost all of the outreach events done in churches today focus on people who land between -3, where they recognize that sin is a personal problem for them, and +2, where they have committed to Jesus and are incorporated into the local church. That is, they guide people who have recognized their problem of sin (-3) through the process of making a decision for Christ (0) and becoming members of the church (+2).
What about the people who know Jesus only as a swear word (-7), have never picked up a Bible let alone heard of a “gospel” (-8), or do not yet recognize that there may even be a supreme being (-10)? What of those people who have heard of these things but remain hostile toward the gospel (-5) or are okay with Christian faith for you but not them (-4)?
Over the last few decades, the number of people who fall into these categories has increased dramatically. I have neighbors who are now three and four generations removed from any meaningful engagement in church. They may have an awareness of God, but that leaves them stuck at -8 on the Engel Scale, and how will they ever come to faith if we do not expand our discipleship efforts beyond the top half of the scale?
We must stop seeing membership in The Wesleyan Church as either the beginning or the end of discipleship. If our denomination and our churches are going to minister meaningfully into the middle half of the twenty-first century, we must make deliberate efforts to move people from absolute ignorance of God (-10) to recognition of sin as a personal problem (-3) to faith in Christ (0) to incorporation into the his body (+2) to wholly committed followers of Jesus (+5).
Membership equated to belonging
The 2016 edition of The Discipline introduced a simplified version of Paragraph 551:2. The original paragraph, entitled “The Value of Membership” outlined a seven-step process of discipleship that could be used as a general template for local congregations. The new version condensed these into three phases: believe, belong, and become. The first of these, of course, represents “when people come to Christ in saving faith.” The second signifies how how every believer “is a part of our local church fellowship,” and the third embodied the commitment of each church “to help its members mature in their faith and character.”
In my opinion, this simpler process represents a significant improvement over the previous edition, but it does have one significant weakness. Most people naturally relate church membership to the belonging phase, but this is a critical mistake. You see, this generation is desperate to belong, and in many ways, what they believe is contingent upon where they feel they belong. Therefore, if we are going to persuade people to believe in and follow Jesus, we must first help them to belong.
For a person to belong, we must first welcome them. This requires leaving the four walls of the church and connecting with unsaved people (Matthew 28:19 says “going…”). It means forging a relationship with them by learning their names, taking interest in their lives, and being there when they have needs. It means accepting that they will be sinners (1 Corinthians 5:10), have no interest in leaving their sin behind until they are saved (2 Corinthians 4:4), and need someone to help them when the weight of that sin comes crashing down on them.
For a person to belong, we must also value them. This involves allowing them to contribute in meaningful ways. This does not mean we should allow them to become members or sit on the church board, but a huge part of this is identifying volunteer roles that they can fill even before they are saved. It involves sincerely sharing your life with them. A critical part of this is appropriately sharing your hurts and struggles and allowing them to minister to you. It means walking with them as they navigate toward freedom, even when that means walking backward from time to time.
In short, if people need to belong before they believe, then we need to find ways to include them wherever they are on the Engel Scale. We cannot wait until after they’ve believed or even started coming to church.
In the end, we must not lose sight of the main purpose of membership. When we arrive at the judgment seat of heaven, we will not be asked which church held our membership. I hate to think of this, but there will be card-carrying Wesleyans who are turned away at the gate. Rather, we will be asked if we were earnest disciples of Jesus. And when Jesus asks what we did with our faith, he will not be pleased if we sat around waiting for people to believe before we endeavored to reach out and include them.