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Church Membership, Family and Individualism

I appreciated the following statements by Mark Horne regarding church membership. The basic question that he is answerings is whether or not the church should be treated as a confederation of families. The answer to this question is then used in the context of representation and voting within the church. Horne shows that Biblically the church is NOT a confederation of families but is composed of individuals who are individually Baptized. Here are the quotes:

People become members of the church for themselves, not by household. I realize that some justifications of infant baptism have obscured this basic fact, but it nevertheless remains the case and is demonstrated by the fact that babies in a Christian household are, indeed, baptized. The baptism of the head of the household does not somehow automatically count for his or her dependents. Rather, each dependent must be separately baptized.

There is no need to obscure what the Bible teaches about men and women in the Church with an unbiblical network of inferences which are at the very best a matter of adiaphora and quite probably just wrong. Let’s free ourselves from such hindrances and run the race God has placed before us without unnecessary obstructions. Let us honor the family by teaching husbands and wives and children to fulfill their God-given roles. Let us honor the Church by treating it as God’s household, not as a confederation of human households.

Posted by tim at August 10, 2004 6:53 AM

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