\u00a0 \u00a0As the unfolding events of 2020 have seemingly brought every human institution to its knees, the American church is in an unprecedented time in its short history.\u00a0 Church attendance, without a doubt, is the lowest it\u2019s been in recent history.\u00a0 No doubt 2020 has been a challenging time for local church leadership.\u00a0 Unprecedented decisions have had to be made.\u00a0 In the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, as government guidelines were mandated, the majority of churches complied and adapted for the safety of the flock by holding online services.\u00a0 Hopefully, some data will be out soon, but it seems that many churches are still primarily online five months later.\u00a0 Some churches adapted by holding drive-in services held in parking lots.\u00a0 Sunday schools, small groups, and other discipleship groups have either gone to Zoom meetings, or other platforms, or have not met at all.\u00a0 Essentially, church attendance and church involvement has declined drastically.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0Two things that I want to submit to you all is that this year has reinforced the essential need for biblical church membership and biblical headship.\u00a0 This is a call that the local church must be calling and answering at all times, not just in moments of crisis.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0Here are just a few reasons, and certainly not exhaustive, for why I think that the call to biblical local church membership and headship is essential, at all times, but certainly within our current context of 2020.<\/p>\n
Biblical Local Church Membership<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0First, let\u2019s start with a brief but helpful definition of a biblical local church.\u00a0 A biblical local church is a church that devotes themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the braking of bread and prayers; all who belive join together, attending church, and praising God.\u00a0 With church attendance and involvement declining, membership will likely decline and if membership declines, many churches will eventually be forced to shut its doors.\u00a0 Sound biblical local churches need to be in place and ready to minister to those that will carry on in the faith.\u00a0 In challenging times like these, biblical local church membership is essential to shepherding the flock as God has ordained.<\/p>\n
Biblical Headship<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0For the sake of clarity and because this topic can be a hot button topic, a clearly defined role of biblical headship would be most helpful.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 [U]nderstand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God\u2019 (I Cor. 11:3) (Col. 1:18).\u00a0 In a time where regular local church worship and discipleship has been restricted, it is the responsibility of the male headship to disciple his family.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0As the unfolding events of 2020 have seemingly brought every human institution to its knees, the American church is in an unprecedented time in its short history.\u00a0 Church attendance, without a doubt, is the lowest it\u2019s been in recent history.\u00a0 No doubt 2020 has been a challenging time for local church leadership.\u00a0 Unprecedented decisions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[156,158,159,157],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-156","tag-biblical","tag-headship","tag-local-church-membership"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6306,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/6306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acallformen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}