{"id":404,"date":"2009-09-29T09:40:59","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T15:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2009-09-29T13:20:57","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T19:20:57","slug":"why-membership-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/why-membership-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Membership Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin DeYoung gives a six-fold answer to the oft-asked question, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.revkevindeyoung.com\/2009\/09\/why-membership-matters.html\">why does membership matter?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--StartFragment--><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>In joining a church you make visible your commitment to Christ and his people.<\/li>\n<li>Making a commitment makes a powerful statement in a low-commitment culture.<\/li>\n<li>We can be overly independent.<\/li>\n<li>Church membership keeps us accountable.<\/li>\n<li>Joining the church will help your pastor and elders be more faithful shepherds.<\/li>\n<li>Joining the church gives you an opportunity to make promises.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n<p>Go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.revkevindeyoung.com\/2009\/09\/why-membership-matters.html\">read the whole post<\/a> to see how each of these are fleshed out.<\/p>\n<p>Related to this is Kevin&#8217;s new book (co-authored with Ted Kluck),\u00c2\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0802458378\/desesprichur-20\">Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion<\/a>.<\/em> I&#8217;ve only had time to skim it, but what I&#8217;ve read so far I&#8217;ve heartily agreed with and enjoyed. I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll be carrying this in our church Resource Center soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin DeYoung gives a six-fold answer to the oft-asked question, why does membership matter? In joining a church&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/why-membership-matters\/\">Continue Reading &rsaquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}