Interview With Steve Timmis, part 2 -- Membership and Leadership
MM: OK, Steve, next topic: church membership. If i am correct, you all don't practice church membership. Why not? What about all of the direct biblical commands that tell us to practice church membership? Er, wait, never mind that. But seriously, how do you practice church discipline if there's no membership from which to remove the person being disciplined?
ST: You're right Mike, we don't practice church membership (at least not in the formal sense I think you mean it), but we do practice church belonging. I often say that anyone can turn up at any of our meetings once, but come twice and you're in. I've even toyed with the idea of changing our name from The Crowded House to Hotel California; people can check out anytime they like but they can never leave! Obviously I'm only kidding (did I really need to say that?!) but we view being part of church as very important indeed. What we don't do is discriminate between members and non-members which inadvertently gives people the opportunity of opting out by not opting in. This means that everyone who regularly attends or hangs out with us is the subject of, what we might describe as, appropriate gospelling. This is baseline church discipline for us; the long term, low key, relational, life-on-life, eyeball-to-eyeball mutual discipleship in which the gospel is shone, with laser like precision, into each others heart. But at some point it might become necessary to step it up a notch or two, and that's where the Matthew 18:15-20 process kicks in. If we come to the end point of that process and need to 'exclude' someone because of unrepentant sin, compounded by a refusal to listen to the church, then we prohibit them from eating with us. Although we don't practice church membership in the formal sense you mean, you'll be please to hear that we do practice baptism and communion. Baptism is the way into the gospel community; communion demonstrates our identification with, and participation in that gospel community. This then is the sharp end of our church discipline - we say 'No' to eating with us and celebrating the Lord's death with his people. To do so would be completely inappropriate. The person has rejected the gospel in their continuing sin, and they've rejected the gospel community in their obduracy. They need to see that their actions have serious consequences, which is exclusion from the life of the people of God, the place of God's blessing and care. By God's grace, expulsion from that context of life and blessing that is the gospel community will be the means by which the Holy Spirit brings the individual to repentance and faith.
There is obviously much more I could say about how we conduct the family business with such an apparently indiscriminate approach, but I'll leave you to ask about that if you think it will be helpful.
MM: Thanks Steve. I am disappointed to hear that you celebrate baptism and the Lord's Supper. I was hoping I had the Biblical upper hand on those topics. :)
It seems to me that at least some of the most glaring differences between the Total Church house church model and the 9 Marks way of doing things may be due to context. So monologue may seem strange in a small, intimate context and formal church membership isn't as critical when the group is small and it's clear who belongs. Does that seem fair?
ST: I do think there is an element of truth in that Mike. Context is a significant issue without any doubt. What we don't do is point the finger at more traditional churches and say "you've got it all wrong pal, and we've got it all right". That would be arrogant and demeaning of the work of God through his people. But I wouldn't want to reduce the argument to simply a question of context. That might help us to pat each other on the back and be all hunky-dory, but it would inoculate us against the challenge we can be to each other. I may be wrong in my views of preaching and membership, but at this point I don't think so (it would be plain stupid to hold those views if I thought I was wrong!).
And as I said earlier, this is not a case of pragmatism (which is always wrong) but principled pragmatism. The principle with regard to preaching is being Word-centred not preaching-centred. How you then work that out is where the context issues comes into play. The principle with regard to membership is that if you're too large to know who belongs then you're too large. Now I know that is a highly contentious statement, but the given cannot be how many people can be drawn together; but how many people can be discipled so that non-Christians can see the gospel at work in community. Please hear me on this one. I am not saying that it is wrong to gather everyone together regularly (weekly, monthly, whenever) so that someone gifted and skilled in teaching the Bible can teach them. What I am saying is that should not be the primary expression of church.
There needs to be some serious devolution where the stuff of church actually goes on. In those contexts, it is clear who belongs and the Word of God can be massaged deep into each others hearts. In that context the biblical injunctions to one-anothering can be obeyed. It is in those contexts that the Lord's Supper can be celebrated, baptisms take place along with evangelism, discipleship, discipline and mundane, messy life.
MM: Can you also share some about leadership in the church (particularly the house churches)? Do you have elders? How do you develop leaders? How do you find enough leaders to keep planting churches when most churches can't find enough for one congregation?
We do have elders, certainly in our TCH network. We also have a programme for trainee elders. That's where potential elders join the eldership team for a year. They get taught about godly leadership, they see it in practice up close and personal and they get exposed to all aspects of church life. At the start of the year we encourage the church to watch these men and see how they progress in life and godliness. At the end of the year we ask the church if they know of any reason why these men should not be duly recognised. If not, they are elders. We try to develop leaders a lot further back than that though with real investment in young men. We have informal categories of 'leaders with potential' and 'potential leaders'. But there are two important considerations:
(1) In a life-on-life context, it's a lot easier to develop leaders than it is in a larger, somewhat more anonymous context.
(2) In a smaller church context, you can focus in on the biblical requirements of leadership (character and aptitude to teach) rather than cultural requirements (oratory, charisma, alpha-male), which means that the leadership pool in which we fish is actually larger!
MM: As a charismatic alpha-male, I'm not sure how to take that comment. But I do know that I have been challenged to look at our congregation (where leadership is in short supply) with faith that the risen Christ has not left us under-gifted (in the Ephesians 4 sense) as a church. Perhaps my standards are more rigid than God's, as there is a strong pull to look for an elder who is qualified (biblically) plus some extra relational qualities that are valuable to me personally.
Thanks Steve! Part three will be a grab-bag of questions regarding evangelism and missions.
"the given cannot be how many people can be drawn together; but how many people can be discipled so that non-Christians can see the gospel at work in community"
Very true, because lack of discipleship can just as easily occur in a church of 50 vs. 500
When it comes to raising up leaders, Steve makes an excellent point about identifying qualified men and giving them an opportunity to be involved. Many churches don't do that, or at least don't have a good system to do that. I spent a year banging my head against a wall at my previous church trying to find a way to have leadership opportunities that were also opportunities for discipleship/training by church leaders. The leadership didn't see much reason to train leaders who were not focused on college students (the sole mission of that particular church). It's imperative that mature church leaders see value in training and discipling young leaders. See Josh Harris' article for a great summary of this (http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2008/4/)
Posted by: Chris Blackstone | Jan 16, 2009 11:44:41 AM
I'm with Steve on the non-necessity of church membership with regards to church discipline. That makes sense to me. What I wonder about is maintaining doctrines the church deems important.
For instance, if someone comes for a few months can they then teach a class if they want to? If so, how do you handle it if they start teaching prosperity gospel or some other doctrine the church does not embrace? Do they have to agree to certain statements up front and if so isn't that a kind of de facto membership?
Sorry that's so many questions. I'm just in a similar situation and am wondering how it gets handled elsewhere.
Steve, if you're reading do you have any input?
Posted by: Brian | Jan 16, 2009 11:52:54 AM
It seems to me that in Steve Timmis conception of belonging to the community does not need to be a clearly understood self-conscious step on the part of the outsider to become one who belongs. If he likes the group but does not want to commit to them, can he attend without feeling accountable to the group. Does mere attendance necessitate belonging, even if the person is not personally willing to submit to being part of the community? It almost sounds like come twice and you're in (even if you don't want to belong) or stop coming. I think there should be a third option for these outsiders who want to hang around a bit longer but are not ready to belong (and if Steve Timmis had more time and space to write, then maybe he'd nuance it). They might not understand the gospel, church community and accountability, the great commission and the role of the church, etc. Hanging around to hear and see the gospel and its effects on a community should be an option while not necessarily belonging (at least for a time) which is why I think a formal, or at least self-conscious, commitment from the outsider to the church of wanting to belong is wiser.
Posted by: PJ Tibayan | Jan 16, 2009 1:10:27 PM
The only question I would have of those who have concerns about Steve's approach is this: Does membership itself guarantee any of the qualities you would wish to see in someone? The primary point is that if you are too big to know the members of your congregation then you are too big. Surely there is no one who believes any longer that membership correlates to accountability? The vast majority of evangelical churches have set the bar fairly low insofar as membership is concerned primarily due to the increasingly privatised nature of western culture. Even if they set it high there are few who effectively "police" the lives of their members, or who know the lives of their members well enough to speak into difficult issues of marriage or giving or greed or lust. We've set up professional pastoral care units in churches to deal with the issues that the Bible states are to be worked out in the context of everyday life.
Posted by: Steve McAlpine | Jan 17, 2009 7:27:18 PM
Brian, thanks for your helpful questions. I'm not sure how membership guards against the situation you envisage. Whenever people teach in our churches they are doing so in the context of a functioning community. Which means that they are only teaching because their character lines up with the gospel and they show at least some promise of aptitude. They will not have been asked to 'sign up' formally or informally to our Statement of Faith or our values because no-one is. They will have had some 'front-end' input on what they're going to teach. They will certainly get some response and evaluation after the event. But neither is it out of the question that they will be interrupted if they are not teaching truth that leads to Christ! The bottom line for me is that membership ensures nothing. It's only a quiet vigilance moment by moment that we can discharge our responsibility to guard the gospel. One final thought if I may? The NT consistently links belief and behavior. In fact, belief is often the way people try to justify their behavior, which means that it's almost always 'after the event'. If you're in a context where lives are shared at a meaningful level then it's going to be more likely that the early warning signs are going to be spotted and false teaching nipped in the bud. Hope this helps? Enjoy grace.
Posted by: Steve Timmis | Jan 18, 2009 2:22:01 AM
Could it be that there is a place for formal membership, but that we often place too much emphasis on the formal part and not enough on welcoming people into the community of believers along with the expectation that they will join us in our activities and beliefs? I believe in a fellowship of believers into which new people come and are welcomed into our personal lives such that, as they participate in our lives in Christ, it becomes self-evident that they are indeed members of the local body and that formal membership is merely acknowledging what has occurred in their hearts.
Posted by: Dan | Jan 18, 2009 10:06:45 PM