Become a member

Putting your name to it

You can attend here indefinitely without ever becoming a member. Nobody will chase you, and you will not be seated differently.

But there is a difference between being in a room and being part of a household. Membership is the moment you stop being a regular attender and become someone this church is responsible for — and someone who takes responsibility in return.

In practice that means the pastors know they are accountable for your care, and you are saying that these people, specifically, are your church. Not the one you watch online when you are away. This one.

Four ordinary commitments

You commit to being here — not perfectly, but as your normal pattern rather than your occasional one.

You commit to the people. To knowing some of them properly, and to being known, which is the harder half.

You commit to giving, at a level you decide privately and nobody audits.

And you commit to the church itself — to its teaching, its leaders, and to raising a concern with someone rather than about them.

A conversation, not an application

It starts with a pastor, over coffee or at the church, walking through what we believe and what membership means and answering whatever you want to ask. Some of those questions are theological. Most are practical, and a fair number are about whether you would be welcome given something in your past. The answer to that is nearly always yes.

If it is right, you are received by the elders and introduced to the congregation on a Sunday. If it is not, or not yet, that is a perfectly good outcome and it changes nothing about how you are treated here.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Ephesians 2:19, ESV