Responding When We Feel “Pressured” to Join a Church
My husband and I feel “pressured” to join a church we’ve just started attending. What should we do?
I wrote this answer for 9Marks a few years back and it may help someone who reads this repost.
Dear 9Marks,
My husband and I started looking for a new church close to our new home. We have been to Sunday service 4x and Wednesday night Bible study 1x at one Southern Baptist church. We shook hands with the pastor last Sunday after church. He told us we should become members, and that the new members’ class was starting this coming Sunday.
Another elder said the same thing to us a few weeks ago, as have several others. Is this usual for Southern Baptists? We are both fully immersed baptized Christians that have held memberships elsewhere. We believe in church membership, but have never felt pressured to join a church. Our previous church didn’t want you to be a member until you had attended for six months. It’s a nice church with nice people, it seems biblical, but we just feel pressured. Is four weeks a usual length of time? This is our first time at a Southern Baptist church.
Thank you!
—Virginia
Dear Virginia,
Thank you for your question, Virginia. First off, let me say: (1) with 47,000+ churches in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention, I wouldn’t say that there is any “typical” practice among Southern Baptists with regard to membership. Each church will have its own policies and procedures. (2) The length of time necessary to decide on which church to join varies according to circumstance.
It may be that the church you’re attending is a bit aggressive in the way it’s inviting you to join. It may also be that these conversations are independent of one another and don’t necessarily reflect the church’s culture. It’s difficult to judge which is the case. Yes, some churches can be tempted toward self-centeredness and therefore become too pushy in the building of their own kingdom. These churches wrongly pressure attenders to join their church, as if they know God’s will for them.
Whether the church you’re attending is applying inappropriate pressure is impossible for me to discern from afar. At the same time, we should receive—and enthusiastically welcome—biblically warranted invitations to commit to some local congregation.
As you discern whether this congregation should be your new church home, remember to interpret their actions charitably since “love believes all things” (1 Cor 13:7). Because we love and understand that the nature of Christian living is in the context of church community, churches and pastors should serve their Christian guests by helping them find a gospel-preaching church to commit to as soon as possible, even if it isn’t their church. Pastors can’t help a guest toward membership without some biblically warranted pressure in raising the issue.
Ultimately, I can’t give a definitive answer to the question about this particular church because I don’t know it. Continue to value church membership, avoid churches who genuinely pressure you, interpret others’ words with charity, and welcome invitations to join a church.
—P. J. Tibayan