One of my favorite writers on the spiritual life is Richard Rohr. He writes so well on the contemplative live and it's interaction with our daily living. Here, he has some great thoughts on church membership. I have been giving "church membership" alot of thought lately mainly because I believe it's a system that perpetuates spiritual immaturity when, in reality, it should promote spiritual maturity. Here are some thoughts from Rorh on church membership.
Historically, religion has more often been a belonging system or a belief system,than an actual system of transformation. When belonging and believing is yourprimary concern, you do not really need healing or growth, or even basic spiritualcuriosity. All your homework is done for you and handed to you. If you let thegroup substitute for your own inner life or your own prayer journey, all you need todo is attend. Church for several centuries now has largely been a matter ofattendance at a service, not an observably different lifestyle. Membership requirements predominated, not the “change your life” message that Jesus so clearlypreached.
Membership questions become an endless argument about who is in and who is out, whois right and who is wrong? Who is worthy of our God and who is not? Thisappeals very much to our ego, and its need to feel worthy, to feel superior, to be apart of a group that defines itself by exclusion. The Country Club instinct, youmight say. That is most of religious history. The group’s rightness or superioritybecomes a convenient substitute for knowing anything to be true for oneself. Wheredid Jesus recommend this pattern? It has left Christian countries not appreciablydifferent than other countries, in fact, sometimes worse. The two World Warsemerged within and between Christian countries. We can do so much better.
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