As our Immanuel family continues to grow, I’ve had a number of new people ask me, “So how do I become a member of this church?” Others, who have been attending for two or three years, have wondered whether they themselves are yet members. These questions and wonderings reveal that we have not communicated a clear membership process that enables people to know they fully belong to Immanuel Anglican Church.
Membership in a local congregation is important! It’s similar to a wedding vow. It is a mutual commitment that creates a life-giving connection to others, upheld by God in the midst of pain and joy, hardship and celebration.
Members of Immanuel Anglican Church are baptized Christians, resting in the grace of Jesus, who commit to:
Trust in Jesus: In Jesus, we grow to love God fully, participating in the Triune God’s life and purposes.
Affirm and practice core beliefs: We grow in understanding, upholding, and living what we believe as revealed in Holy Scripture, expressed in the Creeds, conveyed through Anglican practice, and experienced in the Sacraments and sacramental rites.
Love each other: We grow in loving fellow members as Jesus loves us, putting on “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one as a complaint against another, forgiving each other…” (Colossians 4:12-14).
Give to and receive from the church family: We grow in serving the Immanuel family through regularly sharing our time, talents, and treasures, “for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:7-16).
Serve the community: We grow in serving our immediate communities and the world through prayer, compassionate acts, and proclaiming the refuge, reconciliation, and renewal that comes only through Jesus.
These Spirit-empowered commitments provide the foundation for living our vision—Immanuel: God with us…for the sake of others. They also are the trellises supporting how we Worship, Grow and Serve, the three expressions of our life with God in Christ, which in turn are the fruits nourishing our congregation’s (proposed) mission:
“We cultivate a Spirit-filled family that offers Refuge, Reconciliation, and Renewal to the communities of Northern Virginia and beyond, inviting all people to experience life with God in Jesus Christ.”
Don’t overlook the joyous truth that when you make such a commitment to this church family, we in turn are making this commitment to you! “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. … If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
The next several weeks I will be preaching about what it means to be a member of Immanuel Anglican Church. On October 20th, you will be invited to officially say “yes” to being a part of the Immanuel family. If you’re already a member, you’ll be invited to recommit to the vision and mission, worship and life which the Lord has given to our congregation.
I encourage you to listen attentively these next several Sundays—not just to the sermons, but to God’s Spirit, to hear whether he’s inviting you to join our family.
Your Pastor in Christ,
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