A Different Kind of "Member-ship"
May 15th, 2008 by ljkim
From an institutional perspective being a “member” of something means to be in the set of church attenders, and the sub-set of voting church attenders…and being a member you are essentially interchangeable with any other member – one person, one vote. But in the Bible, and in the church-as-community perspective, a member is something entirely different. Literally the word member (both the English and the Greek word it translates, mele) means “body part.” And the purpose of the metaphor is to show that each member is essentially unique (although some can be similar and others complementary – like ‘left-hand’ and ‘right-hand’) – but each members is absolutely essential… Which would you rather cut off your left pinky toe or your right pinky toe? The answer is “NEITHER!” I’d like to keep them both please. And if I hurt my pinky toe my other appendages don’t laugh and say, ‘Haha, you’re useless’ – No! Because when my left pinky toe hurts “I” am hurt… In a way, every part of me feels the pain, “owee!”
The best human metaphor for this idea of “membership” is (maybe) a family, (or a group of friends who are like a family)… In a family all the members fit into the set of “family members” and into various subsets – but they are NOT interchangeable any more than one’s nephew is interchangeable with the family cat.
What this means for the church-as-community is, every member has a unique place and role to play. Some people may be good big-brother or big-sister types who have a gift of taking care of people; others may be “vanguard” types who have a way with introducing new ideas, helping people see different perspectives, others may be the intellectual types who like to debate new ideas and issues – others still may be the practical “get it done” types who can organize and make things happen… Me personally (Leo), I’m none of those really…I’m something like a teacher-type, I like to teach the Good News in the Bible… This is a little different than the professor-type who may like to teach “Scripture.” So there’s lots of room for teacher-types. And this is not to reduce anyone’s identity to one neat little word – on the contrary every person’s role is either completely unique or contextually unique – no two body parts are exactly the same.
[About the photo: It's a picture of feet.]
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