I\u2019m confident my church would be at least a little bit larger if not for this one thing I do. When I meet visitors, I often suggest other healthy churches closer to where they live. Some newcomers are so taken aback that I quickly assure them we\u2019d love to see them again. Then I return to praising whatever other pastors and churches I just mentioned.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t do this for show; I genuinely want them to consider these other churches. In doing so, I serve the visitor (they might find a church better suited for them). I instruct our members (we will not compete over saints). And I set the tenor for the membership process at MBC (we are neither the only healthy church in Memphis nor convertible with the church universal).<\/p>\n
If all this sounds strange to you\u2014like one car salesman recommending another dealership\u2014this article will not convince you otherwise. The point of this piece is to illustrate how to be catholic in one area of church life: the membership process.<\/p>\n
Membership Classes<\/strong><\/p>\n What is the point of your membership class? You probably walk through your statement of faith and church covenant. You may also add your church\u2019s core<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meaningful membership upholds glad-hearted catholicity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":723,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[331],"class_list":["post-66832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-membership-discipline","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/723"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66832"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66834,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832\/revisions\/66834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}