Ask Me to Stay, and I'll Try

No one was more surprised than I was to find myself in a new member class after less than a year at my local church. Perhaps it was a result of growing up Catholic that the idea of membership held little appeal; the only benefits appeared to be (1) eligibility for church governing committees and (2) getting to vote for leaders of said governing committees.It’s not that I didn’t consider myself a member of the body of Christ. It was that I didn’t get why this membership needed to be made official beyond baptism or confirmation. Worse yet was the thought of transferring membership among any number of congregations over the course of my life like some serial monogamist. What was the function of a class or a covenant or a pledge to make known a membership that seemed to change so very little?This is the last of five posts in the “Trust Me” series in which I’ve been lifting up the small ways church leaders can make a big difference in building trust with Millennials. By now you’ve probably figured out that these “micro-resolutions” aren’t rocket science. Nor are they all that different from how trust is built with anyone else. It’s as simple and as hard as being real and living real: being real means our church knows who we are, what we’re about, and where we need help seeing ourselves rightly; living real means our church knows who’s in our neighborhood, what they’re going through, and why we need them in order to thrive. In sum, membership in a local church is the process by which we recognize our shared need for one another.To finish reading this article, join me with your comments, questions, and other trust-building suggestions at Patheos:http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2015/02/trust-me-church-what-im-longing-for-in-a-new-member-class-and-beyond/