8 Great Things About Being a Church Member
Tony Merida
Deep, committed church membership is not obligation — it is the God-designed context for flourishing.
The things that annoy you most about your church — the messy people, the inconvenient commitments, the unpolished programs — are precisely the things God uses to shape your character. Merida challenges the modern tendency to church-hop and makes the case for committed, imperfect community.
Everything Merida wants you to walk away with
You're not subscribing to a service you can cancel when it stops meeting your preferences. You're binding yourself to a community for their growth and yours, through comfort and difficulty alike. This is how God designed spiritual formation to work.
Consumerism produces shallow attachment. Contribution produces formation and genuine community. When you shift from evaluating the experience to investing in the people, everything about your church life changes.
Messy people, inconvenient commitments, unpolished programs — these aren't bugs, they're features. Sanctification happens in friction, not in comfort. The perfect church doesn't exist, and if it did, you'd ruin it by joining.
These aren't a checklist for judgment but checkpoints for intentional growth. Each one represents an area where you can move from passive to active, from consumer to contributor, from spectator to participant.
The modern tendency to leave when things get uncomfortable guarantees you'll never experience the kind of growth that only comes through staying. Depth requires duration. You can't build deep relationships or deep character in a place you might leave next month.
Sitting in the back row wondering why it all feels hollow is the natural consequence of consuming without contributing. Investment means using your gifts, serving in unglamorous roles, and caring about people whose names you've learned.
When you love your church, you love the people in it — with all their flaws, struggles, and annoying habits. The institution exists to serve the relationships, not the other way around.
Personal disciplines matter, but they were never meant to replace the irreplaceable context of shared life. Iron sharpens iron. You need people who know you well enough to speak truth and love you enough to stay.
It's easy to identify what's wrong from the outside. It's much harder — and much more Christlike — to roll up your sleeves and help fix it from the inside. The church improves when its members invest, not when they evaluate from a distance.
There is no plan B. The church is the bride of Christ, the body through which he works in the world. Loving your church — your specific, imperfect, local church — is one of the most countercultural and rewarding commitments you can make.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Tony Merida
This book has a straightforward agenda: to help you love Jesus and his church—and to know how to love your church. Every time you walk into your church’s large or small gatherings, you can say of your fellow believers, “All of these people are our family.” Some of you may be tempted to add “Unfortunately…”—and that, too, illustrates the church. Every church has people who are difficult to love. You may be one of them from time to time.
When you get adopted, you get a new family. And the church is a family of adopted brothers and sisters (Galatians 4:4-7; Romans 8:12-17). When you come to faith in Christ, you get not only a new relationship with your Father but new family members too (1 Timothy 3:15; 5:1-2; Galatians 6:10).
“The household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
God purchased the church with his own blood (Acts 20:28). Jesus so identifies with his church that when Paul persecuted believers, Jesus asked, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4; 22:7). To persecute the church is to persecute Christ himself.
This book draws your attention to eight key responsibilities of church members—each also a privilege: belonging to a local church, practicing hospitality, valuing corporate worship, caring for one another, serving the body with spiritual gifts, relating well to pastors, bearing individual witness, and impacting communities and the world as a local church.
Many love the idea of the church but don’t actually have fellowship with real believers in a local church. Recapturing the New Testament’s vision of Christ’s church helps us love our church as Christ calls us to.
God has given you a need for community—and he has given you the place where that need is met: the church. He gives you a place where you belong; now you need to commit to belonging.
Belonging to a church means investing your life in a gospel-centered community of believers who joyfully serve one another and advance Jesus’ mission together.
The church is a local community of believers who gather for worship and scatter for witness. They share life together centered on Jesus for the good of one another and for the good of the world. The Bible knows nothing of isolated, “lone ranger” Christianity.
We’re tempted to show partiality based on appearance, accent, age, affluence, ancestry, affinity, or achievement. James exposes this partiality plainly (James 2:2-4): honoring the wealthy while marginalizing the poor is evil judgment.
Ask yourself what your instinct is toward people unlike you: “Sit by us,” or “Let’s move somewhere else”? Welcoming church members move toward those who are different.
There are still many ways churches dishonor the poor today: failing to plant in poorer areas, relocating away from need, devaluing poor believers’ voices, and limiting opportunities for training and leadership.
Your proper response to the grace shown toward you in Christ is the extension of grace to others. Hearts shaped by gospel grace become welcoming, hospitable, and generous.
Hebrews calls believers not to neglect meeting together, but to assemble regularly and encourage one another (Hebrews 10:25). You have a role in gathered worship: not just receiving, but strengthening others.
We know these things. The question is: do we do them?
Paul’s instructions on singing (Ephesians 5:18-20; Colossians 3:16) emphasize both variety—psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs—and sincerity of heart. Corporate singing is ministry to God and to one another.
If someone watched you sing, would they believe from your expression that you trust what you’re declaring? Let the answer be yes.
One of the most remarked-upon aspects of the early church was how believers cared for one another. The New Testament’s repeated “one another” commands form a compelling vision of practical church life.
Paul moves from the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) directly into church care (Galatians 6). Spirit-filled life is not mainly spectacle; it is sustained, relational faithfulness.
The New Testament repeatedly calls believers to actively love, honor, instruct, encourage, confess, pray, bear burdens, and do good to one another.
Galatians 6:1 calls spiritual people to restore those caught in sin with gentleness. Restoration may be painful, like setting a dislocated bone, but it is healing pain aimed at repentance and renewal.
You are called to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), while still carrying your own load (Galatians 6:5). Churches must distinguish between ordinary responsibilities and crushing burdens requiring help.
“Load” points to ordinary personal responsibility. “Burden” points to heavier realities that often require family-like support from the church body.
Galatians 6:6 teaches that those taught the word should share good things with teachers. Supporting faithful teachers is part of advancing the gospel through sustained proclamation.
Personal holiness affects community health. Sowing to the Spirit yields life; sowing to the flesh yields corruption. Private habits are never merely private in church life.
You never really sin in isolation, and you never really pursue holiness in isolation either—both always affect others.
Caring is costly and tiring. Galatians 6:9-10 urges believers to keep doing good without giving up, especially toward the household of faith.
Restorers must act spiritually, gently, and watchfully—aware of their own vulnerability to temptation and committed to humble, non-hypocritical care.
Caring is costly and tiring. Galatians 6:9-10 urges believers to keep doing good without giving up, especially toward the household of faith.
As a Christian, you shouldn’t think of your church as “the place where I listen to sermons” but as “the place where I serve.” Listening to sermons is important, but members are contributors to ministry rather than consumers of ministry.
Scripture gives three motivations for service: God’s mercy, the Spirit’s gifts, and the Son’s return.
When you look clearly at God’s mercy toward you, offering yourself to him is the reasonable response. Romans 12 calls believers to resist conformity, renew the mind, and live consecrated lives that discern and do God’s will.
Ponder what you deserve: judgment. Ponder what you’ve received: salvation. Mercy should produce worshipful service.
Paul points to both speaking gifts and serving gifts, and he emphasizes the heart posture beneath the action.
Paul implies at least two pathways for discernment:
Don’t limit service only to what you are best at. Serve in your gifting, but don’t neglect ordinary acts of obedience that every Christian is called to practice.
In 1 Peter 4:7–11, Christ’s nearness produces sober prayer, earnest love, hospitality, and gift-based service—not panic or withdrawal.
The end is near: pray, love deeply, practice hospitality, and serve. Faithful service is often ordinary and unseen.
Given public failures by some leaders, honoring pastors can feel difficult. Scripture, however, distinguishes false leaders from faithful shepherds and calls believers to honor the latter while rejecting the former.
Pastors are not CEOs or power managers. Biblical leadership emphasizes holiness, humility, and servant-hearted oversight. The New Testament pattern also includes a plurality of elders.
Elders are not beyond correction. Biblical humility rejects both hyper-critical suspicion and practical infallibility.
“If you build it, they will come” is not a faithful evangelism strategy. Most people come because someone loved them enough to invite and engage them personally. Evangelism belongs to the whole church.
Evangelism is first about the heart before method. We naturally speak about what we love, treasure, and hope in.
Peter emphasizes defending your hope, not merely winning arguments. Hope in Christ makes witness compelling, especially under suffering.
Jesus did not use one canned script with everyone. Paul calls believers to gracious, context-aware speech. Faithful witness should be truthful and alive—not mechanical.
Network evangelism is a lifestyle of gospel intentionality in your existing relational web.
After identifying people in these networks, pursue a simple pattern: pray for them by name, invite them into ordinary life, serve practical needs, share helpful resources, and share the gospel personally.
You are part of the ongoing story of God gathering a people for himself. As you trace the gospel from Jerusalem to your local church, you can marvel at God’s faithfulness and join his mission with courage.
Acts ends with a cliffhanger because the story continues. The church today is still living out that mission story.
The Antioch church modeled both identity and mercy: believers identified with Christ publicly and met practical needs sacrificially.
In missionary sending, avoid both individualism (lone-ranger mission) and institutionalism (cold bureaucracy). The biblical pattern is Spirit-directed missionaries sent and supported by churches.
The church is not peripheral to God’s plan but central to it. Local church life gives a foretaste of coming glory as God’s people gather to worship the Redeemer.
God has given your church as the place where you are formed by Word and sacrament, where you respond in song, prayer, and service, and where spiritual family shares both joy and sorrow.
Pursue faithfulness to Christ and his church today: belong, welcome, gather, care, serve, honor, witness, and send. The Lord of the church loves you with an undying love—so love your church.