If you are not a member of a church, Jonathan Landry Cruse makes an extremely compelling argument to become one. If you are a member, it will fill you with further joy as you consider the beauty of belonging to God’s people. “It is all about Christ! We belong to the church because we belong to Him, and we love the church because He loves the church. How wonderful it is to be a member of Christ’s church!”

It wasn’t until I began to consider Reformed theology and moving from the church I grew up in to a Reformed church that I actually thought deeply about what it meant to be a member of a church, and until I recently became a member of the church I currently attend, the full realization of what church membership meant had not dawned on me.

While I was in the position of trying to understand the implications of church membership, a book like Church Membership by Jonathan Landry Cruse (MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) would have been immensely helpful, with its simple, yet powerfully effective, explanations of what church membership is and why it is so important.

Cruse, the pastor of Community Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Kalamazoo, MI, carefully deals with four particular facets of church membership, relying on Scripture first, and then the Reformed confessions and other Reformed theologians.

Every chapter concludes with helpful discussion questions, and the fourth chapter is followed by an extremely applicable question and answer section that touches on many of the most common questions raised by the concept of church membership.

I found that portion particularly helpful as I continue to reflect on my experience transitioning from the church I grew up in to a Reformed church. Cruse also provides a great list of additional resources and helpful endnotes for further research.

The Nature of Church Membership

The first chapter of the book deals with the nature of church membership. Church membership, Cruse writes, “is fundamentally about how we relate to God” and vice versa. Belonging to the church is inextricably tied to belonging to God, for she is the ekklesia (Greek: lit. “called out ones”), called by God out of the world, to fellowship and communion with Him, and for His glory–an incredible privilege (p. 22).

The local church, characterized by the preaching of the word of God, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline, is where the Christian “goes to meet with God,” and God’s “greatest means of growing” the believer (p. 31).

In defining the invisible and visible church, Cruse provides an excellent and concise defense of covenant baptism. He also notes that church membership is “the greatest outward expression of our privileged status as God’s possession”(p. 36). “Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?” Cruse asks, rhetorically, to close the chapter (p. 36). Who wouldn’t, indeed!

The Necessity of Church Membership

In light of the “prevailing practice of many self-identifying Christians today” to reject the idea that a believer must find a local church and have their name recorded on to the membership rolls, Cruse dismantles opposition to church membership by arguing from a historical precedent founded in Scripture, arguing that it is foolish to throw away a practice that has belonged to the church for the past two thousand years (p. 39).

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